This is the first in a series of four weekly reports Networked Insights is issuing on the 2010 World Cup and the social media buzz around its most popular players. The results have implications for the future of these athletes as brand endorsers. We’re using SocialSense, our social media listening platform, to track engagement and themes around the players.

Chocolate, plane tickets, diapers, cars, VCs… and still social ad spending is low? This week points out the apparent contradiction.

Our latest research, “SocialSenseTV: Network Ratings Report, May 2010,” is complete, just in time for the upfronts season.”Lost” grabs the #1 spot in online engagement, though Nielsen ranks it at #10 in the traditional ratings.

By now, everyone agrees there’s great value to be drawn from the social-media dataset. But how do we define and categorize that value? PR and marketing activities are generally separated along reactive/proactive and tactical/strategic lines. Analytics is the key to a world of ROI from social-media data.

It’s tough on top. This week, top dogs Google, Facebook, Apple, and Lil Wayne come under fire and get knocked down a few pegs.

Marketing experts are telling Toyota that it needs to rebuild the trust of women in the wake of the recall mayhem. Social-media listening can play a critical role in campaign design, helping to fill in the gaps left by traditional methods.