This is so brilliant, we’re a bit dumbstruck it didn’t happen sooner. ETrade’s loveable toddler trader spokesperson (the message being it’s so easy to trade online with ETrade that a… right, you got it) is the victim of a spoof ad in which he starts trading in, quite naturally, toxic assets and loses EVERYTHING.

Nobody saw this one coming. Flip video, the darling gadget of mobile journos and digi-documentarians, is dead, shut down by its under-pressure owner Cisco. We are morbidly fascinated here with the death of brands in this era of social networking. The death of Flip is the spookiest we’ve yet seen.

Not only is animal protection organization PETA up in arms about last week’s elephant slaying video, Go Daddy’s social followers are pummeling its accounts with hate posts. Lurking nearby is Namecheap, trying to ensnare its disaffected social followers.

Two weeks ago we wrote about Fiat 500 loves, a social media campaign underway in the UK that highlights the compact auto’s Congestion Charge-busting engine and plays on Britons love of group-buying deals. The effort is being run via Grape Digital, a London-based social media agency. Grape must have really impressed the Italian automaker as Grape Digital this week was named the social media agency for all of Fiat Automobiles UK.

AT&T tipped off a social media drive last week for the super-smartphone Motorola Atrix 4G amid heated speculation of rising phone bills and tone-deaf customer service thanks to its bid to buy out T-Mobile in the U.S. The Motorola Atrix 4G has its merits, reviewers say, but are the bells and whistles enough to distract the social masses from the widely panned T-Mobile merger?

Last year Ford put its Fiesta brand in the hands of America’s drivers to help tell the real story behind the car. This year the company has placed its social media faith in an orange sock puppet called Doug.

How much is a single, glowing Facebook recommendation worth to a marketer? Just how valuable is a strong endorsement from a blogger in determining future sales? And just how engaged is the average TV viewer with a popular show with all these distracting networked gadgets, tablets and laptops in the room? Syncapse answers some of these questions in a new piece of research out this week.

The evolution of online video, you could say, took a step backwards last week with Warner Bros. stepping up as the first Hollywood studio to cut a Facebook distribution deal, streaming rentals of “The Dark Knight” for three bucks a pop. To some online video experts, it’s not the price tag, but the experience that has them grumbling. Batman fans are confined to viewing the entire film off-site, on Facebook.

For the 198,775 people who’ve declared their allegiance to the Microsoft Zune, these are troubling times. News reports are swirling that Microsoft will kill off the iPod-wannabe imminently. The only problem is Microsoft is denying the reports, but nobody’s listening. Yes, there’s a Zune metaphor in there somewhere.

Here’s one for climate skeptics: iconic Italian car maker Fiat has teamed up with travel e-tailer LastMinute.com to bring deals to Londoners to mark the Fiat 500 TwinAir’s break with London’s notoriously pricey congestion charge. When it comes to building a long-term community around a brand, perhaps nothing works better than giving people something for nothing and the chance to show it off to their friends. Here’s the strategy.