Already up against the wall over questionable privacy practices, Facebook is now being accused sending users' "personally identifiable" data to advertisers despite promising never to share such information "without your consent." "Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent," writes The Wall Street Journal. The problem first came to light in a report by researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, as Online Media Daily reported …

As if Facebook and its founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn't have enough going on, Zuck is now facing accusations of securities fraud from former Harvard schoolmates. According to Venture Beat, they're claiming Zuck "and other Facebook execs tricked them into a supposed $65 million settlement that was actually worth far less." Judge James Ware of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will reportedly hear those arguments -- filed in an appellate brief late last month -- in an upcoming court case. "Seems like Mark Zuckerberg is experiencing a serious dose …

More news coming out of I/O... Google just announced the acquisition of a small maker of software that lets users share their iTunes music across digital platforms. Simplify Media's software lets users share music and photos using programs like iTunes, iPhoto and Windows Media player. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Simplify "connects people directly with their content, without the hassles of syncing or uploading all their files," according to the company's Web site. "Simplify users can also share their personal media with family and close friends in a private, secure group." TechCrunch suspects that that …

Google just announced the next version of its Android mobile operating system. Dubbed Froyo, Google promises that this latest version will be significantly faster and more enterprise-friendly. "Froyo will also offer a backup API, a 'cloud-to-device' messaging API and support for tethering and portable hotspots," notes ReadWriteWeb. "In addition, Android 2.2 will feature a significantly faster browser and better ways to find Android apps." Regarding Google's cloud-to-device messaging service, Google's VP of engineering Vic Gundotra said the API is not meant to "make up for the lack of basic features like multitasking." (That remark, according to ReadWriteWeb, …

Social media desktop platform Tweetdeck just raised another $3 million in a Series-B round of financing. The London-based startup -- which builds software to help people consume continuously updating information streams -- has now raised roughly $5 million in under two years. "This is an inside round, with all the previous investors led by Betaworks, participating," Media Memo reports. Still, "if you want to be a skeptic you might wonder why the company didn't get new money this time." Tweetdeck also just released a new version that supports Google Buzz and Foursquare, which allows users to view …

Word from the Google I/O conference is that the search giant is now activating upwards of 60,000 Android powered phones a day. That number was actually determined back in February, but still represents double the number of Android phones Google was activating a year ago, reports TechCrunch. Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering at Google, also said from I/O that Android was the second best-selling smartphone this past quarter -- selling only behind RIM, "and yes, ahead of that other rival," notes TechCrunch. (We're going to say Apple.) According to Gundotra, AdMob found that Android was also first …

An article in this week's edition of the Onion (which as we all know is America's finest news source) under the headline "New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It" falls squarely under the category of It's Funny because it's true category. It's so spot on, a reporter might be tempted to crib it's technique of summarizing quotes in brackets. For example, it offers the following from Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley: "But more than that, Foursquare is an [endless string of meaningless buzzwords we just couldn't bring ourselves to transcribe]."

TechCrunch picks up on a discussion -- on question and answer site Quora -- between outgoing Mozilla CEO John Lilly and its co-founder Blake Ross about the future of the company. (The debate apparently began after someone posted the question: "Will Firefox have double-digit market share in 3 to 5 years?") Ross says: "I'm pretty skeptical ... I think the Mozilla Organization has gradually reverted back to its old ways of being too timid, passive and consensus-driven to release breakthrough products quickly." Lilly says: "I'm hardly an unbiased observer, but am confident that it will (retain double-digit …

Video web site Blip.tv has raised another $10.1 million in funding -- its third round of venture investment since it debuted in 2005, according to The New York Times' Bits blog. The company said it plans to use the latest round of funding to "accelerate the growth of the independent Web shows that Blip.tv hosts and distributes." Blip also plans to expand its sales force for international advertising, and build new products for its producers and community of video producers. This latest round was led by Canaan Partners, along with Bain Capital Ventures -- apparently Blip's earlier …

An Israeli research team has developed a machine algorithm that can recognize sarcasm, reports Popular Science. To that we say: Big deal! SASI, a Semi-supervised Algorithm for Sarcasm Identification, can apparently recognize sarcastic sentences in product reviews online with astonishing 77% precision. To create the algorithm, the team scanned 66,000 Amazon.com product reviews, with three different human annotators tagging sentences for sarcasm. The team then identified certain sarcastic patterns that emerged in the reviews, and created a classification algorithm that puts each statement into a sarcastic class. Those engineers must be reeeaaally smart. "The algorithms were then …