The relationship between television and social media has become more relevant -- and more important. Networks and specific TV shows are consistently pushing personal handles and hashtags to encourage engagement with their content. Some even launch fun contests and entice viewers to submit their own UGC (user generated content) through carefully thought-out integrations or during commercial breaks.

But how does one go about measuring the actual content being generated on social media and its direct impact as a result of television show, advertising and more?

Earlier this month, Facebook joined Twitter in the real-time news space as they announced that a select few news organizations, like CNN and Buzzfeed, would be allowed access to real-time public posts for an exact keyword and reports of the gender, age and location of those users engaging.

Most recently, Facebook began sending weekly metrics to four large TV networks, including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, as well as a few "select partners" according to The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog. Specifically speaking, the reports will stay private but will divulge in actions that take place on social media platforms during TV episodes (likes, comments and shares). On top of this, numbers will be calculated relating to how many Facebook users were behind such actions. Having these numbers will help networks get a better understand of what content is working with viewers and what is not, thus developing more highly integrated digital marketing strategies into the overall plan.

Although Facebook's new APIs are somewhat limited, experts believe that it will demonstrate how this social media giant is trying to set itself apart from its rival, Twitter, by placing more of an importance on its large fan base.

Daniel Slotwiner, the lead of Facebook’s measurement team says, “The conversation is being generated by a group that is much more representative of the general population– that means we should have a better signal as it relates to ratings."

TELL US: Do you tweet or comment during your favorite TV shows?

FOLLOW UP: Do you think data provided by Facebook will actually help TV networks?

-- Samantha

Big news out of Facebook, they will soon be offering embedded posts. This means that when you post something on Facebook, you will be able to generate a code, which will allow you to embed that content elsewhere on the web. Just about every other social media platform already offers this ability, from YouTube to Instagram. At the moment, this function is only available to a couple big brands like CNN and Huffington Post, but expect this ability to roll out to the public any day now. This new feature may not seem like a big deal, everyone else is doing it, right? However, when you think about what this action is truly saying about Facebook, the enormity of Mark Zuckerberg's decision can be seen. Abstaining from embeds was Facebook's way of saying they are THE source on the internet. All other content should, and will be, embedded onto Facebook, not the other way around. Now that Facebook has given in, and will start offering embedded posts, they are admitting that they need to be out on the world wide web, more than the world wide web needs to be on Facebook.

This new feature will make it easier for users to discover content outside of their Facebook circle. Since your newsfeed consists primarily of content delivered by people and pages you have selected to follow, stumbling across that bit of news you were completely unaware of is much less likely. Now when you are surfing the web and come across an interesting article with and embedded Facebook post, you can like, follow and comment directly on the article, causing users to see more diverse material on their native newsfeed going forward.

Although Facebook is still the pinnacle of social media platforms with 699 million users logging in everyday, it has become fairly obvious that they have been losing some steam. Is this offering of embedded posts an attempt to reclaim some of the market share Facebook has recently lost, or is it just a desire to stay as relevant and user friendly as possible? We suppose only Mark knows the answer to that.

-Mike & Samantha