AOL has purchased Rally Up, a team of mobile developers behind the popular “Rally Up” and “FacePlant” mobile apps, to begin its new “mobile first” initiative led by David Temkin, AOL’s new Vice President of Mobile.

“Rally Up” is an LBS app that enables users to combine private microblogging with location to allow users to share text, photos and direct messages with each other, while “FacePlant” is an app that would allow users to see which of their friends are available to chat on the FaceTime application available on the iPhone 4 — though it’s currently pending approval from Apple for inclusion in the App store.

AOL’s highly-touted “Mobile-first” push marks a new approach to the mobile market for the company.  For the first time, AOL mobile applications will consist not only of mobile versions of its popular desktop and web offerings, but also will include all-new products that launch first on mobile devices.

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It was reported over the weekend that Apple’s App Store has reached 250,000 total apps, reaching yet another important milestone in its short existence.

According to 148Apps.biz, who keeps a running tab on app store metrics, Apple’s U.S. App Store passed the quarter million mark on Friday, just two years and 49 days after it opened to the world.  As of Saturday morning, there were 251,007 applications from 50,304 publishers available for download for the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.  AppShopper.com, which keeps a similar list, has the total pegged at 253,777 apps, including 24,334 for the iPad.

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Mobile app monetization is big business these days, with more and more reports circulating about developers and the mounds of cash they’re earning on free apps.  While iAds hasn’t exactly gotten off to a great start, other rich media mobile ad-networks are chugging right along with reports of highly successful campaigns that emulate the same attributes iAd promised.

One such ad-network, Greystripe, has seen a boost in developer and advertiser interest since the launch of iAds, and recently announced that one development firm on its network is earning over $10,000 a day using its rich media ad-units.  MobilityWare, a company that produces popular gaming apps for the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone, has been on the Greystripe network for over two years and claims earnings of $298,309 for the month of June, 2010 for its 17 apps in the App Store.

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The Android Market has been known to have a few issues from a developer’s point-of-view, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t proven successful as a revenue generator.

Arron La, developer of the Android app “Advanced Task Manager,” wrote a blog post recently outlining the revenue he’s earned during the latter half of 2009 and 2010 up to this point.  According to him, developing for Android has more than grown into a viable revenue stream.

La reports that the paid version of “Advanced Task Manager” generated $18,060 in 2009 and $30,400 so far in 2010.  Since November 2009, AdMob revenues in the free version generated $28,640 as of August.  In total that’s a little over $77,000 in revenue from just one app.

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Microsoft has big plans for its upcoming Windows Phone 7, and it’s focusing much of that effort on mobile advertising.

The company has been putting key executives and mobile-ad sales teams in place to position themselves to best capitalize on a segment the company has lost years of progress to Apple and Google on.  Microsoft announced it will move Paul Lyonette, head of emerging platforms at Microsoft Advertising, to oversee the expansion of its mobile sales division and boost the headcount of its European mobile ad sales team.

More importantly, the company has put heavy emphasis on improving the quality of its mobile-ad display technology and platforms, including heavy emphasis on advanced geo-targeting.  It’s no secret that Microsoft has lost out big on both the Online and mobile advertising growth we’ve seen in the past several years, and this could be a last chance effort before they completely loose relevance in the market.

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RIM today issued an update to its BlackBerry App World that includes some added bonuses for consumers, but takes a larger cut of ad-revenue away from developers.

On the consumer side, RIM is slowly adding much better billing options, including direct credit card payments and carrier billing to the mix.  In addition, it’s also lowering the minimum price to 99 cents and $1.99 per app from a much higher minimum of $2.99 before.  The addition of carrier billing will be a huge milestone, as it’s always been the preferred method of payment from a consumer point-of-view.

RIM said today that AT&T will be the first carrier to support carrier billing and others will start to support in the coming months, but it will be up to the carriers to announce.  The addition of better payment options will help induce higher revenue potential for Blackberry developers, but RIM also announced today that the revenue split will move to a 70/30 model instead of the previous 80/20.  This is the same model both Android and Apple use, but RIM had long been admired for giving such a generous revenue split.

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During the lead-up to Facebook’s announcement of their new check-in/location functionality, many wondered what effect it would have on other LBS startups that occupy the same market — namely Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and a host of others.

That question was answered today as Facebook announced their new API to go along with its “places” functionality.  Reps from Foursquare and Gowalla even took the stage during the announcement to talk about how they plan to leverage the new API to their advantage.  In short, Facebook made it clear that they intend to play nice with other LBS apps.

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