When CBS exec Jack Sussman was asked why the Grammys broadcast is taped-delayed again this year, he said all the chatter on social media gives West Coast viewers “another reason to want to watch.” And it looks like he was right: last night’s Grammy Awards pulled in its second-highest ratings numbers in 20 years — last year’s Whitney Houston tribute still holds the top spot — while generating more than 14 million tweets, according to Twitter. Read more

It’s a done deal. Twitter confirmed reports of its Bluefin Labs acquisition on Tuesday night, doubling down on the company’s efforts to own the social TV space.

“This acquisition reflects our commitment to the social TV market, and builds on our exclusive partnership with Nielsen announced in December to develop the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating, the centerpiece of social TV measurement,” explained Twitter COO Ali Rowghani. “We believe that Bluefin’s data science capabilities and social TV expertise will help us create innovative new ad products and consumer experiences in the exciting intersection of Twitter and TV.” Read more

Updated: It’s a done deal.

Earlier: Business Insider is reporting that Twitter is buying social TV analytics company Bluefin Labs. We’ve reached out to Bluefin and Twitter for comment. So far, no official confirmation, but it sounds like the deal is close to finalizing. Read more

Updated: Last night’s game, halftime show, commercials and power outage combined to make it the most social event on television to date, according to data from Bluefin Labs and Trendrr. The Super Bowl tallied up 30.6M social media comments (Twitter, public Facebook data and GetGlue checkins), 2.5 times last year’s social activity of 12.2 million.

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Twitter debuted its Vine video app a week ago, and we’re starting to see some creative experiments by TV brands, both local and national. As we noted in last week’s story, Vine restricts clips to 6 seconds and requires you to shoot it with the iPhone — no way (yet) to import clips into the app. With those limits, some TV brands are giving it a swing. Without further ado, here are a few examples we’ve gleaned.

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Portlandia (on IFC, Fridays at 10/9 C), the sketch-comedy phenomenon, is currently in the midst of a third season that continues to showcase IFC’s success at originals. Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein the co-creators and stars along with Jonathan Krisel, co-creator, writer and director have found a way to make an hilarious new kind of TV who’s comedy also addresses the most important issues facing social TV right now. Here’s why Portlandia and IFC are dominating social TV. Read more

To see how much Twitter has grown in the past four years, just look at the 2013 Inauguration Day numbers below compared to 2009. In a little over one hour, there were 1.1 million tweets about this year’s Inauguration Ceremony. This is compared to just 82,392 tweets about Obama’s first Inaugural in 2009. Read more

The late-night race to innovate is on. A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Conan O’Briens entirely crowsourced episode “Occupy Conan” set to air on Janaury 31^st. This past Thursday night, the rivalry between Jimmy Kimmel and Matt Damon was taken to the next level when Damon kidnapped Kimmel and hijacked his show. Fans of the show know that it has been a running joke for years that Kimmel bumps Damon at the end of episodes saying that they’re out of time. Here’s how Damon got revenge and how how social TV reacted. Read more

Last fall Twitter acquired a mobile company called Vine, and today they rolled out what Vine has been building: a mobile app that enables users to take six-second videos with their phones and share and embed them. In many ways, it’s Twitter’s version of a video Instagram. You’re limited to six seconds, just like Twitter holds you to 140 characters.

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We all know that Twitter is a big TV driver, thanks to the open nature of the platform and the company’s relentless efforts to work with the industry. But Facebook has always been a bit of a mystery. The majority of interactions on Facebook are private, and until recently, its search product has been essentially useless. But we all know that Facebook maintains a tremendous reach advantage over Twitter.

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