Having gained market share on Toyota Motor Corp. and being not far from passing Honda Motor Co. in the U.S. in sales, the scrappy underdog is turning a bit more into the playground bully.

Case in point: Toyota was going for the maximum splash in revealing its new Camry today at locations in Los Angeles, Dearborn, Mich., Georgetown, Ky. and New York. And they promoted they would show the vehicle early through Twitter. Too bad Nissan had purchased the top search term “Camry” for Twitter and when you search for that word, the first tweet that appears is something from the Nissan twitter feed.

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A U.S.-based blogger on SeattleWireless.net who says he owns a Leaf claims that the car’s telematic system automatically sends pinpoint data on the car’s location to any third-party RSS feed to which drivers subscribe. The Japanese automaker is “looking into the matter,” according to a company spokesman in Tokyo, who would not confirm or deny the claim.

Amid growing concerns about violations of privacy via the web, the matter has ricocheted through social media such as Twitter since the post was published on Sunday evening in the U.S. (Monday morning in Asia.)

The alleged glitch involves the apparent disclosure of data from Nissan’s Carwings system, which is an optional subscription-based service that works off the factory-installed GPS navigation system, providing information about the vehicle’s position, including latitude and longitude, direction, destination and speed via a GSM mobile phone connection.

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Mitsubishi Motors, Japan’s sixth-largest car maker by volume, became the world’s first car maker to start mass producing electric vehicles last year when it launched the i-MiEV, a small passenger car designed for city driving. But speaking at a recent event, Mr. Masuko pointed out that most commercial vans and trucks run more or less fixed distances every day that are within the driving ranges of current electric cars on a single charge.

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Digital Garage Inc., the Tokyo-based technology company that provides Twitter to millions of Japanese chirpers, said the revenue of its newly restructured social-media unit is expected to more than double to 1.7 billion yen through June 2011, according to its revised midterm business plan. Twitter makes up more than half of that segment’s business, a Digital Garage spokeswoman said.

The company revamped the segment, called the “media incubation unit,” this year to focus on Twitter. It has generated some 200 million yen in ad sales in the first six months since it launched its advertising service in December, according to its annual financial report.

As of April, the logos of 82 Japanese companies, including Nissan, Panasonic and Sharp, appear in the ad slot of the Japanese-language Twitter site. The growing number of eyeballs skimming ads from Sony (SNE), mobile service Au and others will likely throw more dollars Digital Garage’s way.

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Since launching its iAd mobile advertising service on July 1, Apple has been slow to roll it out. Of the 17 launch partners Apple named for iAd, only Unilever PLC and Nissan Co. had iAd campaigns for much of July. Of the remaining 17, Citigroup Inc. (C), Walt Disney Co. (DIS) and J.C. Penney Co.—which tied its campaign to the back-to-school-season—have since launched iAd campaigns and other companies are planning iAd efforts.

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Unexpectedly strong consumer appetite for gadgets like Apple’s (AAPL) iPad and new smartphones from HTC Corp. has stretched the capabilities of some companies that make the memory chips, touch displays and other parts found in those devices. Auto sales, too, have snapped back, straining supplies of custom chips used in cars.

Companies like Apple and Nissan are seeing the drawbacks of lean manufacturing methods, which call for carrying little inventory but make supply snags tougher to offset.

They are also victims of an overstretched global supply chain trying to meet recovering demand after the recession forced suppliers to slash production capacity and postpone plans to upgrade their facilities.

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Firefly’s ad unit is a mashup of lots of things we’ve seen in the past: A rich media banner ad with video that turns on if you roll the mouse over it and then takes over the whole page if you ask it to do so. If you do, you’ll watch a full video clip, followed by a survey, and get a chance to watch more clips, plus bonus goodies like maps, etc.

Easier for me just to show it to you:

FireFly is owned by Exponential, the Web ad company that owns the Tribal Fusion ad network, so the idea is that FireFly will leverage the network, which reaches about 120 million people in the U.S. FireFly will need to buy banner ad space on the network and charges advertisers only when Web surfers engage the ad.

Marc Barach, FireFly’s chief marketing officer, figures that his company will be buying space at costs that start at $3 for every thousand views and that he’ll get something like one percent of viewers to click on the ads. Which means he’ll have to charge advertisers the equivalent of a $6 to $10 cpm* for his company to make money.

So far, Barach has been able to convince marketers, including Hyundai, Nissan and Procter & Gamble (PG), to give him a shot.

And in case you’re wondering, you won’t be seeing these ads on Apple’s (AAPL) iPhones or iPads anytime soon: Like nearly everyone who sells video advertising, FireFly is using Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, at least for now.

Here’s Barach’s take on the standards Holy War, via email:

“We are currently flash-based and for the immediate future are going to focus our efforts on tapping into the rapidly growing appetite for flash-based video on the web. However, there’s no reason why we can’t offer our functionality in html 5. Our intent is to stay close to our customers and when there is a desire to add iphones/ipads to the mix we’ll be right there with them.”

*An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the rates FireFly intends to charge advertisers.