Amid mounting privacy concerns -- and the emergence of character-damning IMs from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg -- the industry seems to have turned on the company. But, has the social net really lost its footing, or have its myriad critics, analysts, and casual watchers just lost their minds? Noting that "Folks like Leo Laporte deleted their (Facebook) accounts," "Jeff Jarvis is taunting (Zuckerberg) on Twitter," "and The Huffington Post actually compared Facebook's privacy issues to the BP oil spill," blogger Robert Scoble himself acknowledges a "common feeling that we can't trust Facebook …

Sprint and Walmart are partnering on the launch of a low-cost wireless phone carrier named Common Cents Mobile. The newest member of Sprint's prepaid portfolio, Common Cents is part of Sprint's prepaid multi-brand strategy. The carrier will be featured exclusively in over 700 Walmarts across the country. Minutes will billed at 7 cents, while a "Round Down" billing feature will allow "minutes" to last up to 119 seconds, according to Boy Genius Report. "This allows the $20 refill to be good for up to 565 minutes and the $30 up to 848 minutes ... Nifty." Adds BGR, …

Oppsy Daisy! Amid a firestorm of criticism over Facebook's privacy policies -- and questions about its founder's moral integrity -- the Business Insider has published a blush-inducing IM exchange that founder Mark Zuckerberg had with a "college friend" in 2003. "Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard ... Just ask," Zuckerberg IMs this so-called friend shortly after he launched "The Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. "I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS ... People just submitted it ... I don't know why ... They 'trust me' ... Dumb fucks." Granted, Zuckerberg …

Adobe just debuted what Engadget is describing as "a pretty full-force campaign to call out Apple on its anti-Flash mission." The ads -- which happen to be running on Engadget, among other sites -- first declare: "We [heart] Apple," then add: "What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web." Oh, no they didn't! Along with the Web ads, the company has also ran a full page in Thursday's Washington Post to address "the battle in which the two companies …

In its June issue, Consumer Reports calls Apple's retail stores "the best place to buy a cell phone." That's despite the obvious yet remarkable fact that the stores only carry one brand of phone. Consumer Report bases its findings on a survey of some 11,000 readers conducted last year by its National Research Center. Apple's stores got "especially high" marks for activation and check out, while, overall, the company took an 84% satisfaction rating. Relatively speaking, the big losers including Alltel and Sprint/Nextel -- each with a 74% ranking; along with T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless - each …

Today, 15% of U.S. households have standard plug-in phones but almost never use them, according to new research from the National Center for Health Statistics. What's more, "One of every four American homes (24.5 percent) had only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cellphones, or mobile phones) during the last half of 2009 -- an increase of 1.8 percentage points since the first half of 2009," reads the report. "In addition, one of every seven American homes (14.9 percent) had a landline yet received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones." The report also found …

Could Facebook concede that its far-reaching Open Graph and Instant Personalization initiatives play too fast and loose with user privacy? As unlikely as that sounds, the company has called an "all hands" meeting, scheduled for 4pm PDT, today, to discuss the company's overall privacy strategy, insiders tell All Facebook. "Facebook has come under increasing scrutiny for a number of reasons and many were left with a sour taste in their mouths following a New York Times reader Q&A with Elliot Schrage, the company's Vice President for Public Policy," All Facebook notes. Of chief …

What's the matter with Digg -- the five-year-old news aggregator that some analysts have called, 'past its prime'? "Too many cooks in the kitchen," insists TechCrunch. "When too many people have product input, you've got lots of features but no soul." Furthermore, "Product should be a dictatorship ... Not consensus driven." By contrast, TechCrunch attributes Facebook's rapid rise to turning a deaf ear to critics and frequently "revolting" users. As a result, Digg has been standing still now "for years" as Facebook, Twitter and others have "run laps around it." That said, TechCrunch believes that Digg founder …

Mounting resources to take on Ticketmaster, a startup by the name of Ticketfly just raised $3 million in a first round of funding. Simply put, Ticketfly lets concert promoters sell tickets and promote their events on social networking services. The company's cofounders and co-chief execs, Andrew Dreskin and Dan Teree, previously pioneered TicketWeb, which was actually acquired by Ticketmaster. Teree, however, tells Venture Beat that the ticketing giant has failed to figure out social media, which leaves room for more socially savvy competitors. Ticketfly asks that concert promoters enter their event information so that its Backstage Suite …

The New York Times profiles four college kids hammering away at an alternative to Facebook, i.e., a social network that won't "force people to surrender their privacy to a big business." Social startups are nothing new, obviously, but The Times related their efforts to a growing collective resentment against Facebook "for devouring every morsel of personal information we are willing to feed it." As the young entrepreneurs describe it, their free Diaspora* software will let users set up their own personal servers, dubbed "seeds," create their own hubs, and fully control the information they share. Bigger picture, …