The 53rd annual Grammy awards posted the highest ratings since 2001 with an average audience of 26.5 million viewers, up 3 percent from last year’s telecast.

Grammy buzz

Overall buzz around the 2011 Grammy awards was up 30% more than the 2010 show.

Grammy sentiment 2011

Overall conversations around the 2011 Grammys were 83% positive, down 6% compared to last year.

Grammy sentiment 2010

Conversations around the 2010 Grammys were 89% positive.

Grammy 2011 artist buzz

We analyzed chatter around artists within Grammy conversations. Lady Gaga, who entered the red carpet in an egg, was mentioned most often, followed by Eminem, album of the year winners Arcade Fire, Justin Bieber and Rihanna.

It seems that Twitter is changing the world 140 characters at a time. We reported last week that Twitter was the most social brand in the month of March. Twitter experienced 76.8% growth during March as everybody from Snoop Dogg to Fortune 500 companies to local churches to President Obama is tweeting on a regular basis. Here are just a few headlines this week:

Twitter Passes New York Times
Is Twitter Killing RSS?
AT&T uses Twitter during service outage
New York church brings Good Friday to Twitter

Think about that for a minute. Twitter is surpassing one of the most established publications in the world, eliminating the need for feed readers, providing reliable communication during an outage for one of the biggest cellular service providers, and even spreading the gospel.

Rainn Wilson says he has more twitter followers than the population of Tulsa after just a few months on Twitter.

John Mayer says he was lamenting the loss of fan mail in the tech age until he realized Twitter is the next best thing.

Golfweek says Twitter is the biggest trend to hit the Masters since the green jacket.

Ad Age says that advertising agencies need to think more Twitter and less TV.

How has this micro-blogging company with only 30 employees surpassed behemoth Google in buzz within the last few months? Check out the chart below to see how Twitter has surged past big names like iPhone, Facebook and even Google in web chatter.

Nearly 1 out of every 100 online conversations mentions Twitter. And only a fraction of the population has actually realized the power of Twitter. Where is its ceiling?