The NFL continues its blitz on building up its non-American fan base in a geeky way, this time teaming with Foursquare to create a virtual Super Bowl party for the big game on Sunday early Monday morning.

Ethics, values, commitment, the virtue of knowing when to talk and when to listen – if it is anybody who knows the importance of the principles of proper communication it is nuns. They could teach us all a thing or two about proper social media engagement too, the subject of this post.

Madison Avenue is buzzing once again about the last-minute entry of a dot-com advertiser, daily deals aggregator Groupon, in Sunday’s Super Bowl. To hear Groupon tell it, they plan to use the $3-million-for-30-seconds investment as their coming out party. But three days before kick-off and it’s already got people wondering: could this signal a repeat of the disastrous “dot-com” Super Bowl of 2000?

Marketers have to be pretty clever or pretty bold to gain attention during Super Bowl week, particularly if you’re not advertising in the big game. Two years ago, Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) took the latter position forcefully by getting its ad – featuring models humping vegetables in the name of supporting the vegan lifestyle – banned by broadcaster NBC. Peta is back this year dangling no-excuses out-takes of what appears to be the same shoot, this time keeping it to the web.

That’s what we’re wondering today after carmaker Toyota started running a promoted Tweets campaign for its luxury brand, Lexus. On Wednesday, it announced the recall of 245,000 cars sold in the United States, the same day it started running a #Lexus hashtag campaign. The results? There’s not all that much chatter about the campaign, but there’s even less hubbub about the recall.

That’s the big conclusion drawn from the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer, the details of which were revealed yesterday at the WEF forum in Davos. And where do our friends and peers rank? They are losing ground. Fast.

So how to make sense of this new front in social media crisis communications? We’ve been documenting social media reputation issues for nearly five years now. In our recent Social Media Sustainability Index we highlight a list of Dos and Don’ts that can help companies prepare better for a brewing social storm.

We’ve chronicled here many times the impressive success Greenpeace has had in using the most public of social media forums to denounce environmentally destructive corporate practices by brands ranging from Nestle to Burger King and force them into a public about-face. Fast Company this week looks back at one of Greenpeace’s first major social media pressure campaigns – the Kimberly-Clark “Kleercut” initiative – in a tale that all companies would be wise to heed.

Ladies, looking for a paying gig in San Francisco where you get to try on lots of new fashions and then Tweet how “awesome” they look on you? You only have two minutes to convince Levi’s you’re their gal. YouTube skills a must.

What is the plural of Prius?, Toyota asks. It’s not meant to be rhetorical. In fact, the beleaguered carmaker is turning the question into a type of public vote being promoted these days throughout the social web.