They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Joel Jewitt is inclined to agree.

Upon reviewing your social networking friend list, Jewitt and his colleagues at the San Francisco-based data-mining firm Rapleaf say they can help predict which ads you’ll pay attention to and whether or not you’re a worthwhile risk for a credit card or a loan–all without hacking into any accounts or breaking any laws.

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When Paul Otellini, Intel’s (INTC) famously reserved CEO first heard the news, he got quiet. “The madder I get, the quieter I get,” he says, an important footnote for any Otellini user manual. He was hushed via press conference by Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for competition.
“Intel used illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude essentially its only competitor and thus reduce consumer choice in the worldwide market for x86 chips,” Kroes read last May from the 542-page decision on an antitrust case charging Intel with unfair trade practices.

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As you’ve likely heard by now, the Federal Trade Commission is trying to reign in freebie-grabbing bloggers and graft-happy social media users masquerading as unbiased critics. The agency announced an update to the FTC Act of 1980, the requisite guidelines for consumer endorsements and testimonials. For many, the takeaway has been this: Bloggers Must Disclose Every Single Freebie Sent to Them From Companies–or Pay an $11,000 Fine. Scary.

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Can non-profits raise awareness, increase membership, and–most critically–“make the ask” successfully on Twitter? Can a 140-character message deliver the visceral wallop of, say, heart-wrenching footage of starving children covered in flies or the sad eyes of a neglected and abused animal? The answer is yes.

According to Beth Kanter, author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, organizations using Twitter that “take the time to engage supporters in a conversation and get to know them are more likely to build trust.” And that trust can turn into raised awareness, support, and ultimately donations for their cause.

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Feel guilty whiling away hours on Facebook? Now you can tell yourself it’s worth something–to Facebook.

If Facebook counted 3 million users instead of 300 million, it wouldn’t have its stratospheric valuation. The truth is, users have value. But how much is each person worth to Facebook?

It’s a question worth asking, because viral companies like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter derive their value from their users. That’s because unlike conventional audience members, users of social networks tend to be committed participants and contributors.

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Outside the local train station, the Maplewood Civic Association maintains a bulletin board plastered with news of jazz festivals and yoga classes for this small, affluent New Jersey town. One day last winter, an unassuming new flyer appeared, nestled between ones hawking a fish tank and a drum set, titled, “Introducing the Local.” The flyer describes the Local as “a community Web site by you and for these communities, mentored by The New York Times.”

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Wow, I can’t believe it. I’m gonna be rich! Hmm, what’s this video with Tony’s email announcing that we’re going to be part of Amazon (AMZN). Jeff Bezos is welcoming me into the Amazon family. Cool. What a nice gesture rather than a sterile press release.

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New research by IDC points to falling sales of the chip that drives the majority of netbook PCs–Intel’s Atom CPU. One suggestion is that the first quarter 33% drop is a sign that the netbook’s rise to fame is on a down trend. In truth, that’s not quite right. But the situation is complex.

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With Governor Schwarzenegger’s approval ratings plummeting and a budget crisis looming, Californians are already looking for their next gubernatorial savior–and Silicon Valley is stocking the till.

The Valley used to be the state’s political bank, a place where candidates–some, like the Governator, hailing from Hollywood–could go to bankroll their campaigns.

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This week several seemingly unrelated news articles are actually talking about the same thing: a fundamental pattern of competition that reveals the underpinnings between Google’s and Microsoft’s emerging battle in online software. The November 2008 edition of FastCompany quotes Sridhar Vembu, CEO of AdventNet, explaining his analysis of an emerging battle between Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) in one business software business (i.e., Google Docs vs. Microsoft Live’s Web-based office programs). Vembu says, “We simply don’t believe Google has the rational business incentive to go deep into the business/IT software category.” His analysis shows that Google makes more profit per employee from its current services than it would likely make revenue per employee in business software.

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This week Microsoft (MSFT) didn’t get much hype for its three major announcements. Certainly it didn’t stay on top of TechMeme as long as, say, if Steve Jobs gets a sniffle. But don’t miss what they did.

1. On day one of the PDC, they announced Azure, which is a set of cloud services that competes with Amazon’s S3 and Rackspace’s Mosso and will radically change enterprises’ acceptance of cloud services for a whole lot of reasons.

2. On day two of the PDC, they showed off Windows 7, which is getting high praise from my blogging friends who were lent laptops with it on there (I didn’t get Windows 7 yet).

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The topic of blogs and their authors and owners and what exactly defines their place on the ladder of the journalism industry never quite fully goes away. That’s because there’s always something or other that drives the commentariat to reflect on the present, compare it to the past, and try to forecast the future. Some of the latest noise to be made over the matter of “the great divide” has been sparked by Robert Scoble, a writer/videographer/journeyman for Fast Company magazine.

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Ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky is grappling with perhaps its biggest challenge to date: Microsoft. The tech giant stunned the ad world in March when it passed over safer choices like Fallon, JWT and its agency of record, McCann Worldgroup, and awarded its new $300 million consumer-branding campaign to Crispin. It was an act of courage or desperation, depending on whom you ask.

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I just switched all my home pages off of Techmeme to FriendFeed.

I find that Techmeme has become a Google News killer. All I see on it is big media companies (including me, who works at Fast Company).

On top of my FriendFeed right now are people I don’t know. No A-listers. I’m not there.

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