On Wednesday, Facebook will be rolling out "drastically simplified" and improved privacy controls to its hundreds of millions of users, Chris Cox, the company's VP of product, said Tuesday. "He didn't give any details, but did suggest that [the changes] should alleviate some of the recent privacy problems Facebook has faced," reports TechCrunch. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference on Tuesday, Cox said the Facebook team has had an "intense and humbling couple of weeks" amidst outcry over confusing and invasive privacy controls, writes GigaOm. "But until now -- aside …

Yahoo just bought what some are calling the Indonesian Foursquare. Named Koprol, the small social media company offers a geo-location service to its users, much in the same way as the more widely known Foursquare -- which, as The Register notes, Yahoo had also been pursing for a reported $100 million. "Koprol was uniquely designed for mobile phones and within a year has already built a strong user base," said Rose Tsou, Yahoo's SVP for the Asian region. Yahoo provides the global scale and technology to accelerate growth in Indonesia as well as introduce the service to …

Robbie Bach and J Allard -- who TechFlash calls the "founding fathers of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division" -- are leaving the company as part of a broader restructuring. In turn, CEO Steve Ballmer is getting more direct oversight over consumer businesses, including the company fraught mobile unit. The changes are expected to reshape the division leading the company's battles against Google, Apple, Sony, Nintendo along with other rivals in the harried consumer technology market. Bach has served as president of the division since its inception five years ago, and isn't expected to be replaced. "That will …

In a move almost certain to accelerate national smartphone adoption, Wal-Mart has decided to cut the price of Apple's 16GB 3GS iPhone from $199 to $97. CNNMoney.com notes that Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone next month, and is therefore likely working with retailers to clear out remaining inventory. "When consumers get sight of a new iPhone model on the horizon, sales of the existing model typically falls off sharply," it notes. The deal requires that the phone be purchased with a two-year contract from AT&T -- still the iPhone's exclusive service provider. Apple sold …

TweetUp -- the Twitter-centric search and adverting network -- announced its official debut on Monday. According to TechCrunch, TweetUp's destination site ranks Twitter search results by time (and a proprietary algorithm) to determine if a result should be ranked higher than other more recent tweets containing queried keywords. Users will also receive targeted paid-advertiser results within that stream. According to TechCrunch, TweetUp's business model is based on a 50/50 revenue share system, which it considers to be "a pretty compelling offer for advertisers." TweetUp also offers publishers embeddable widgets, and other contextual layers filled with relevant live …

Meet Pip.io -- the latest startup to be positioned by The New York Times as a potential alternative to disgruntled Facebook users. (Earlier this month, the paper profiled Diaspora*, which let users set up their own personal servers, create their own hubs, and more securely control the personal information they share.) Portraying itself as a social operating system, "Pip.io is similar to Facebook and Twitter in that it allows its members to post status updates, send messages and connect with friends," writes The Times. "But unlike its counterparts, the service allows its users to keep more of the …

So, what happens when AT&T's iPhone-exclusivity expires, and Apple starts selling the device through a second U.S. carrier (Verizon)? First of all, nearly 17% of that carrier's customers would upgrade to an iPhone, according to a research note from Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, citing an Alphawise U.S. consumer iPhone survey. "There is substantial pent up iPhone demand within the Verizon installed base as 16.8 percent of Verizon subscribers said they are 'very likely' to purchase an iPhone if offered on the Verizon Network," writes Huberty. "This 16.8 percent is higher than AT&T subscriber's 14.6 percent extreme …

Google just released the exact revenue share that AdSense publishers are given for placing the ads on their Web sites. Publishers can expect a 68% revenue share for content ads, i.e., the ads one sees on Web sites. Therefore, as Search Engine Land clarified, "publishers keep 68% of the revenue earned, while Google takes the rest." Meanwhile, publishers get a 51% revenue share for search ads, i.e., the search ads one sees for using Google search on their Web site. Why is Google opening up? "Earlier this month, it promised to do so in response to an …

Twitter has up and decided to block any and all third-party ad networks from running ads on its service. "We will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API," the company clearly explained in a blog post. For its part, Media Memo said it "sort of" saw this coming. "When Twitter launched its own ad system last month, COO Dick Costolo made it clear that Twitter would be restricting the way that rival ad systems could use the service's data feed." It appeared to some …

Publicly addressing privacy issues for the first time since the launch of Facebook's Open Graph and Instant Personalization initiatives, founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg is admitting that mistakes were made. "I know we've made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place, and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve," Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to tech blogger Robert Scoble on Sunday (which Scoble made public with Zuck's express …