This is one of those questions that admittedly is being asked in just a handful of companies these days. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a pressing question for brands, publishers and organizations of all stripes who seek to reach a global audience on the device they prefer. A new forecast on tablet sales may just accelerate the conversation at the board level.

Promising to be more “accessible and available,” America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve Board, launched itself into the Twitter age on Wednesday with its first official Tweet (and then four more in subsequent hours). For those keeping score, it is playing catch-up to the Bank of England and The Reserve Bank of Australia in the “central banks that tweet” category, but it’s showing a much more savvy than these notoriously anti-social brands.

We started the week with a big Facebook #Fail from Coca-Cola Down Under and things didn’t get much better as we all tuned in for the big tech news of the week – the details of the new iPad. To recap, Coca-Cola Australia figured it would be a fun idea to ask its 736,000 Facebook fans to participate in a type of word-association game that quickly spiraled into a fan-on-fan insult-fest. It was yet another lesson (as if we needed reminding) that in social media, brands have little to no control over what fans will ultimately say.

It’s been less than 24 hours since Apple unveiled the new iPadHD iPad3 iPad and tech bloggers and journos are still picking it apart. It has super-fast LTE hookup for those 14 or so people on the planet signed up to a true 4G plan. It has a better camera, packs more pixels and has a faster processor for gaming and video-on-the-go. What’s it missing? For starters, a single share button or a helpful re-tweet.

The Obama Administration in Washington has passed a series of consumer protections for web consumers that looks eerily European: something closer to an opt-in regime that calls for greater transparency on how user data is used and a do-not-track-option.

PayPal UK launched an effort last week to boost its social media presence through a giveaway contest dangling free iPad 2′s. Its message: love us and we might award you with this must-have baby. Can boosting social followers through bribes be a genuine lure? More importantly, does it work?

Millward Brown released its yearly BrandZ report today ranking the world’s most valued brands, down to the penny. While Millward Brown is the trusted source for overall brand valuation, one thing its don’t seem to take into account is a brand’s social valuation. So we did it for them. Yes, what follows is a rejigging of the league table.

Part of Apple’s phenomenal growth story over the last decade can be seen here in Europe. A decade ago, Euro Mac addicts were hard to spot. Now they seem to be everywhere. Fittingly, it’s Apple gadgets like iPhone, iPod and iPad leading the charge with mobile-mad Europeans.

GetJar is the largest independent app store with, as of February, over 1.75 billion downloads of 145,000 featured apps from 330,000 registered developers. It works with an open market approach, so nearly every mobile device is supported across all major platforms.

Color is a new (launched March 23) photo-sharing social network for the smartphone crowd. The network is novel in that it has no privacy settings or friending capabilities, but instead organizes and presents user photos based on relevancy, location and interests.