Actually I think there are plenty of situations where your allies or unintended targets could catch some of your mental intimidation attacks. I can even think of an example from the fiction, in White Knight.
When Harry uses the little ball of sunshine to frighten Molly that seems like a pretty straightforward mental intimidation attack on Molly, however I don't think she's the only one effected. Murphy comes out of the situation questioning Harry's control.
As you can see she wasn't the intended target, but she was likely in the same "Social zone" and likely came out of it with a consequence that shaped things to come. The intimidation of Bart in Small Favor has similar consequences too I believe.
Now that I'm thinking about it I don't honestly believe that intimidation is such a fine tool that it can be easily directed at just one target. When you threaten someone, they have to believe that you'll carry that threat out, and if you're that convincing you could potentially have your allies questioning if you really would or not. Of course now I'm just musing over concepts, not saying that I believe that mechanically all intimidation should effect everyone in the vicinity.
Interesting point. When the thugs "lost," I allowed her to choose what happened to them, so I suppose that fits the definition of "taken out" rather than "concession." Am I correct in that? Also, her decision was that three of the thugs booked out of there, but one was so terrified he just curled up by the dumpster saying, "don't hurt me" (effectively allowing them to question the thugs). That seemed reasonable to me. What do you think?
And yeah, you did that right, you just used the wrong terminology earlier in the thread, so I got the wrong impression.