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Klout, a high-profile startup offering technology to rank the influence of Twitter users, announced tonight that it has hired Philip Hotchkiss as the company's Chief Product Officer. Hotchkiss previously lead BigCharts.com, a financial information provider that sold to Market Watch for $166 million.

Klout data is valuable because marketers, PR people and others want a way to quickly prioritize which Twitter users they should respond to among many mentions of a monitored brand. Twitter is uniquely well-suited to programatic analysis of topical influencers, as it is rich with interlinked, publicly accessible user profiles.

If you can believe it, a company called CheckPoints has just come up with yet another twist on how "check-in" location-based services applications should work. With its new smartphone application, consumers are rewarded for scanning the barcodes of their favorite products while shopping. The scans add up to points which can then be redeemed for prizes - good prizes, too, like frequent flier miles, Amazon gift cards, iPods and iPads.

But in return, users are essentially agreeing to receive a one-time mobile ad from each product they scan. This makes us wonder: how far will people go for a free iPad?

Advertisers will be allowed to purchase placement in lists of "who to follow" recommendations targeted to users with particular interests on Twitter, according to the latest report by Peter Kafka on the Wall St. Journal's AllThingsD. Kafka reports that the new ad model will be unveiled at the IAB conference in New York City tomorrow.

It's against Twitter's Terms of Service for outside parties to sell followers on the popular messaging service, but that's not just because Twitter wants all the revenues for themselves. Most "buy followers" services are completely untargeted and negatively impact the user experience on the network. This new feature may work out very well for all parties involved, including Twitter users. Early reaction on Twitter, however, is not positive.

Twitter is now selling its Promoted Tweets for $100,000, according to an article in this morning's Wall St. Journal. Promoted Tweets, which allow companies to buy the top spot on Twitter's search results page, is just one of the microblogging network's new advertising initiatives as of late. The idea behind these digital ads is that the service allows companies to associate themselves with a certain trend or keyword. For example, launch partner Starbucks bought their brand name so that anyone searching Twitter for "starbucks" would see an advertisement for the coffee company at the top of the results page.

But while $100,000 is a lot of money to most, Twitter's Promoted Tweets and its other initiative, Promoted Trends, are experimental, largely unproven and not worth the investment - at least that's what several advertisers and marketers cited by the WSJ claimed. Their feelings on that matter, however, may soon change thanks to plans Twitter has in store for its ads service.

TeleNav, which offers branded and white-label navigation apps for a wide variety of mobile phones and carriers, just announced the launch of its own mobile advertising platform. While most mobile ad platforms now offer some form of location-aware advertising, TeleNav has a number of unique advantages, including the fact that its users are obviously willing to drive to a real store, and that it can provide turn-by-turn directions to stores without taking users to a different interface.

Advertisers have long talked about the mystical possibilities of using real-time location data to target customers. The technology existed; most cell phones have a GPS receiver in case of emergency. But real-time location data was off-limits to advertisers until Web-centric phones introduced people to the concept of sharing their location in exchange for utility. Soon, along came apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which essentially trick users into sharing their real-time location with advertisers. Suddenly, location-aware marketing is red hot.

"It's huge and it's increasing," said Michael Becker, a director at the Mobile Marketing Association. "Location is going to play an increasingly critical role in enabling successful consumer engagement through and with the mobile phone."

RIM, the company behind Blackberry smartphones, is getting into the smart billboard business, according to two patent applications it filed recently. But what would a smartphone maker and roadside advertising have in common? It could be a new way to serve up "adaptive" advertising according to data gathered from nearby Blackberry users.

According to mobile-focused blog Unwired View, the innovation comes in the form of using nearby phones to measure traffic speed and density and then adapting a billboard's content accordingly.

It's been nearly 40 years since cigarette advertisements on television and radio were banned in the U.S., and earlier this summer new regulations went into effect prohibiting tobacco companies from sponsoring events, but now the tobacco industry may have found a new, unregulated medium to advertise on - the Internet.

A study released this week describes an "Internet policy vacuum on Web 2.0" that's left YouTube rife with pro-tobacco content.

A new mobile marketing survey from Harris Interactive says that the demographic group most interested in receiving mobile advertising is mobile owners with children. This group is interested in receiving opt-in alerts from brands, says the study, and the adults in households with children are also generally more "promotionally active" than others, meaning more likely to take part in marketing promotions like couponing, discounts and daily deals

Those with children under 6-years old were the most receptive to this form of advertising, with 35% in favor of opt-in alerts that arrived via their mobile phone.

It not as bad as it sounds. U.S.-based footwear retailer Journeys has jumped into the location-based social networking arena by allowing its customers to check-in via their mobile phones and complete challenges in order to receive discounts on their next purchase from any Journeys store.

But don't worry, early adopters, the company isn't launching their own branded application for this - they're teaming up with SCVNGR, the location-based gaming app, in order to offer these rewards.