Nielsen ratings have long been the measure of TV success. For the week ending March 22, ABC, CBS and Fox dominated the Nielsen top 20. Not a single NBC or CW show made the list. But does that tell the whole story? Thanks to websites like hulu, viewers are consuming information online in demand.

We measured web chatter for the Nielsen top 20 during the same week, and added several popular NBC and CW shows to our research as well. The results were surprising. Half of our top 10 is comprised of shows on NBC or CW.

1. American Idol (Fox)
2. Gossip Girl (CW)
3. Saturday Night Live (NBC)
4. Dancing with the Stars (ABC)
5. Desparate Housewives (ABC)
6. Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
7. Heroes (NBC)
8. 60 Minutes (CBS)
9. The Office (NBC)
10. 30 Rock (NBC)

Here are today’s top 10 Twitter users, based on number of Twitter followers:

1. CNN
2. Britney Spears
3. Ashton Kutcher
4. Barack Obama
5. Jimmy Fallon
6. New York Times
7. Shaq
8. Lance Armstrong
9. John Mayer
10. Al Gore

How does the top 10 change when you base the rankings on internet chatter? We measured the same 10 based on blog posts, news feeds, chat rooms, forums, social networks and Twitter posts throughout the past week:

1. Barack Obama
2. New York Times
3. CNN
4. Britney Spears
5. Lance Armstrong
6. John Mayer
7. Ashton Kutcher
8. Al Gore
9. Shaq
10. Jimmy Fallon

On a recent episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy and Kevin Rose (creator of Digg.com and guest of the show) decided to run an experiment to create a “Twitter Rockstar”. The idea was simple: they pick an audience member, send a “tweet” out to all of their followers linking to this audience member’s Twitter account, and announce it on TV.

Their purpose was to take an unknown and unfollowed Twitter user and expose him to millions of people with the intent of creating thousands of followers for him and increasing his popularity instantly. It worked, as he received over 10,000 followers before the show even aired.

Today, he sits at about 33,000 followers. The question is, how long did his “15 minutes of fame” really last? Let’s take a look at the conversations.

Adam Lambert still leads the American Idol Top 9 in chatter by a large margin. Interestingly, Anoop has a commanding hold on 2nd place this week. The table below displays a ranking by web chatter — including blogs, news feeds, chat rooms, forums, social networks and Twitter posts throughout the week.

Internet memes come and go, but the longevity of LOLCats, cute cat pictures with captions representing their thoughts or actions in a very grammatically incorrect manner, has been quite impressive. Looking at its trend over the past two years, we see that it’s starting to taper off. But, how much longer will it live on?

North Carolina is the talk of the tournament. The Tar Heels are leading all other NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 teams in chatter. Should they thank President Obama for picking them to win the championship in his bracket?

With the recent Vanity Fair tribute to Comedy’s New Legends, we thought it’d be interesting to see which member of the comedy troupe is generating the most chatter.  Seth Rogen is in just about every movie preview I’ve seen lately, so he seemed to be the obvious choice.  But veteran actor Paul Rudd has surged past even Will Ferrell in chatter to be the clear leader.  Rudd was great in I Love You, Man, but I thought Jason Segel stole the show.  Is 20 year veteran actor Paul Rudd the biggest comedy star in Hollywood?

Fans of the Battlestar Galactica series have to deal with the reality that the show has aired its final episode. Even though it had great ratings for SciFi, it still claims less viewers than many Friday night major network Primetime TV episodes. However, just take a look at how much buzz it created over the web. Shouldn’t buzz be a factor in the measurement of the success of a TV show? Why aren’t networks focusing more on measurement of DVR/TiVo recordings or views from online episodes? This contributes to the question that needs much attention: Why is Nielsen still the TV ratings standard?

Industry executives project online ad revenue for the NCAA tournament will reach $30 million dollars this year, up 30% from 2008 according to Business Week. Companies like AT&T and Coca Cola lead a list of 35 online advertisers for CBS this year. Anyone watching the NCAA tournament games this weekend has no doubt seen the Capital One commercial where the mom picks the picture of her kid covered in spaghetti to put on her credit card.

But does anybody care? The trend chart below shows that overall Internet chatter about both AT&T and Capital One is flat, if not down since the tournament started. If online sponsors aren’t getting any more chatter, what are they getting? Is the sponsorship investment paying off?

Ellen DeGeneres recently joined Twitter with the intention of reaching one million followers by announcing her Twitter account on the show each day. This is an extremely lofty goal, as the most followed users on Twitter (CNN Breaking News and Barack Obama) haven’t even broken 600,000 followers. In any case, she is doing a fine job, as she has already reached nearly 300,000 followers. But the question is, has this tactic been creating more buzz for her over the whole web? Unfortunately, it has not.