Loopt — perhaps the largest location-based social network, a network that uses your location to recommend places to go and inform you of friends around you — announced the acquisition of GraffitiGEO this week. Several industry observers and researchers are raving about the potential of location-based social networks for businesses and advertising. “Context awareness is critical when you want to buy something, and advertisers get higher targeting based on our patterns and social contexts,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Nadav Aharony in a recent BusinessWeek article.

Amazon shares hit an all-time record -- Today’s $118.49 price is higher than the $400-plus days of 1999, because of splits in the years since. Today’s share price would be about $700 without the splits, says the Wall Street Journal. The Journal hauled out Mary Meeker, a big booster of Amazon and other dot-com stocks in the late 1990s who still follows the sector:

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker attributed Amazon’s recent surge to “continued success in adding new customers.”

She added that the rally “indicates that Amazon.com’s value proposition (lowest prices + best selection + great customer service) is succeeding in attracting consumers as they transition from offline to online in search of value.”

Another factor driving Amazon is sales of third-party products sold in its marketplace, a business once dominated by eBay Inc. Third-party units rose 32% from a year ago and 14% from the second quarter.

About 31% of Amazon’s sales now come from third-party merchants who sell goods on the site and give Amazon a percentage of revenue.

Wall Street, which refused to reward Yahoo for beating the street’s estimates a few days ago, went ga-ga for AMZN today, sending prices up 27% and boosting Amazon’s market value to $51.2 billion. VentureBeat will not make fun of the Kindle today.

Microsoft’s results add to continuing hopes for a tech-sector recovery – Microsoft is the General Motors of the tech sector, so today’s report of an 18% drop in quarterly results from last year could likely have triggered a selloff. Instead, investors bid Microsoft shares up 5.4% to $28.03 today. The Journal attributes it to consumer demand that offsets weak business spending.

Fifteen percent of adult Americans don’t have cellphones — Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times tracked down and interviewed people across America who have chosen to live — for now — without a mobile phone.

“It’s a luxury not to be reached when I’m out and about,” said Gregory Han, a 34-year-old writer and editor living in Los Angeles. Life for him is a lot more planned than most, the consequence of not having a cellphone — or even a landline — at home.

[Photo: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times]

Netflix to roll out streaming-only service outside the U.S. — CEO Reed Hastings wouldn’t tell ReadWriteWeb in which countries Netflix will test streaming-only subscriptions that don’t require the customer to sign up for Netflix’ DVD-by-mail service. But those countries will not be the USA. Hastings said he wants to prove the business model before trying to serve it to the entire United States of America.

Windows 7 reader questions answered by our man Pogue — The guy is kind of touchy about his hatemail from Mac fans, but he takes one for the team today by answering the most broad, what-do-I-do questions about Windows 7 from his inbox. Send this to your parents.

As for PC pundits who trash-talk Windows Vista, former PC World editor Harry McCracken looked up all of the major reviewers’ write-ups of Vista from its debut days. All but one liked it. None forecast the sprawling, deep disinterest with which the general public responded. I’ll repeat my quickie review from yesterday: Windows 7 is a complicated operating system that I use to run a browser, in which I do all my work. Google’s Chrome OS is starting to appeal to me: A simpler, more stable browser with a Unix filesystem beneath it. For free. I’m not saying Windows is going to be gone from most desktops anytime soon, but it may be gone from mine.

As iPhone and Android users, it’s easy to forget that Facebook hasn’t been fully optimized for all touchscreen phones. Many of us sit here from the comfort of our sleek mobile applications, never knowing the drudgery that Palm owners have to face as they type in URLs to open their favorite services. Well Palm owners, you’re in luck. As of today, Facebook has redesigned its mobile site for touch devices (x.facebook.com and iphone.facebook.com) and launched a new domain name at touch.facebook.com.

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According to AllFacebook, the company is looking to offer a consistent user experience across all devices, regardless of how Facebook is accessed. While this is a stopgap measure until Facebook applications are built for emerging touchscreen phones, the new site is a much better interface than the standard mobile iteration. In the past, mobile site users tolerated one long stream of notifications, messages, friend requests and invitations. For a power Facebook user, the single stream display was easily overwhelming. By improving upon the mobile experience, the company is removing the barrier to photo uploads, notes and status messages for these users.

In January, 20 million people were accessing Facebook on their mobile phones. By September, that number had more than tripled to a whopping 65 million mobile users. As the company continues to upgrade the mobile user experience, the rate of content generation appears poised for unlimited growth. To test the redesigned mobile site visit touch.facebook.com.

Discuss

Meez has built a virtual playground for 13 million teens in the past couple of years. Now that playground is going to get a lot bigger and more crowded as Meez integrates its Meez Nation virtual world into MySpace.

Meez users will be able to log into their virtual world directly from within the MySpace social network, almost as if the virtual world is a widget on a MySpace page that lets you dive into another world. The partnership promises to help MySpace with user engagement, one of the closely watched metrics for how well a site hangs on to its users. Meez says it ranks No. 5 in engagement for online destination sites in the U.S. In June, Meez managed to hit No. 1 in engagement, at 36.4 minutes per user, according to market researcher MediaMetrix.

With Meez, users can create cartoon-like avatars, or virtual characters, and chat with their friends. They can express themselves by decorating rooms and buying virtual clothes. They can also wander around in the Meez Nation virtual world, which launched 14 months ago. That world has a variety of neighborhoods, public hangouts, and personal “Roomz.” The most popular thing that users do is dance to music in these rooms, said John Cahill, chief executive of the San Francisco-based company, in an interview. Business is good because of the growing popularity of virtual goods, Cahill said.

Since MySpace is loaded with web-savvy teens who love to share videos and music, the social network is likely to be a good match for Meez in co-marketing efforts, said Cahill. Meez users are watching a million videos per day, and they’re playing over 100,000 games. Each time they log in, they spend about an hour on the site. About 90 percent of users are in the U.S.

Traffic has hit three million unique visitors a month. The company makes money through ads, virtual goods, and paid subscriptions. One of the most popular things to do is send branded virtual gifts to friends. Advertisers include Nike, RocaWear, Clone Wars, NBA, NHL, and others.

Cahill said MySpace is the first of a number of sites that will integrate the Meez Nation virtual world into a branded site. Meez has been profitable since the second quarter on an operations basis, and it turned cash flow positive in July. The company made its Meez avatars available on mobile phones on the KDDI and Verizon Wireless networks.

Meez is backed by Anthem Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Draper & Associates and Transcosmos. The company has 30 employees and has raised $10.75 million in three rounds. Rivals include Gaia Online and IMVU. Cahill said the company isn’t raising money.

This week we’re joining in Google’s celebration of all things mobile to make sure you’re aware of the power you hold in your fingertips with YouTube on your phone. Not only can you watch millions of videos, but also you can upload videos directly from your device; maybe it’s footage of a breaking news event, the drama unfolding at the party Saturday night, or your baby’s first steps. Since we want to provide the best experience for each of you, we occasionally have different solutions for different phones — so read on to find out what’s available for yours.

Almost any phone with a browser can access the YouTube mobile website at m.youtube.com. (Some mobile phone operators offer a pre-programmed link, so if a YouTube link displays on your phone, click it to visit our site.) Once there, you can access your YouTube account, your favorite videos, your uploads and your favorite channels. You can also share, rate, and comment directly from the mobile website to other YouTube users. Or, if you’ve captured a great moment, upload your own video by sending it via MMS or email (sign in to YouTube and click here to get your unique address) and it will appear almost instantly on the website.

In addition to the website, you can also play high-quality YouTube videos with special applications on many devices, including Windows Mobile, Symbian S60, iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, and BlackBerry Storm v1 devices. For devices not listed, it means that there were either technical limitations to getting YouTube on the phone, or the experience wasn’t a significant improvement over just visiting the mobile website. FYI, the apps for iPhone, Android and Palm Pre also support direct-to-YouTube uploads. To install the app on a compatible phone, visit m.youtube.com/app.

Keep an eye out this week as we tweet some useful tips and tricks for YouTube mobile. And be sure to let us know how you’re liking it and what we can do to improve the mobile experience. To get started, just Go Mobile!

Robin Norvell, YouTube Mobile Operations, recently watched “Mobile Tricks.”

Here’s our rundown of the week’s tech and business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

AVG launches its free antivirus suite as Microsoft crashes its party — “AVG Technologies has made itself into a familiar name on the Internet by giving users antivirus software at a pretty good price: free. Today, the company is announcing that the ninth version of its AVG antivirus software will be available in mid-October.”

How Fourth Wall Studios hid an artistic radio drama inside Halo 3:ODST — “Created through a collaboration of startup Fourth Wall Studios and Halo franchise developer Bungie, Sadie’s Story is a self-contained tale. It is a radio drama embedded within the world of Halo 3: ODST.”

Dell building an Android phone for the US (report) — “Since the phone will reportedly run on AT&T’s network, not only does this news add to Android’s roster of device manufacturers, but it also means the mobile OS will be on all four major mobile networks in the US.”

Review: First look at Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 on HTC Pure cell phone — “I tried it out on the new HTC Pure phone from AT&T, and the experience is a big step up from the crappy Windows Mobile experience of the past.”

Why Charles River Ventures sat out on Twitter’s latest round — “When Twitter raised its most recent round of funding at $1 billion, a few players were conspicuously absent, including Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures.”

And here are five more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or just fun:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce strikes back after Apple defection: “We don’t have any regrets” — “Days after Apple announced that it would be quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to its opposition to greenhouse gas limits, the Chamber has very publicly shouted back.”

The iPhone finally gets Flash apps — but not Flash websites — “When Adobe announced the latest version of its Flash technology, a bunch of writers jumped on the fact that Flash 10.1 would eventually work on most major smartphones, except Apple’s iPhone. Looks like we spoke too soon. Sort of.”

U.S. private equity fundraising plunges 70 percent — “This means much less money will flow to technology start-ups over the next few years.”

Amazon debuts payment system for mobile phones — “Amazon Mobile Payments Service, or Amazon MPS as they’d prefer you call it, brings the comforting yellow Amazon button to mobile phone screens.”

Surprise! Dating site OKCupid finds white guys get more replies — “This week in slightly depressing confirmations that the online world is not so unlike the offline one: dating site OKCupid tracked the behavior of nearly 1 million users and found that race is correlated with whether people reply.”