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And it may get even better. I’m checking with Facebook PR, but the actions published could potentially be turned into Sponsored Stories, so Facebook could charge the app where they took place to make the stories appear more prominently in the feeds of people already subscribed to them. Facebook could essentially be taking content from apps and selling it back to them. If you were wondering what Facebook’s long-term game plan is, you’re staring at it. Pull content from everywhere, mix it with ads, keep you reading. And with the carrot of referral traffic to dangle, some developers may be happy to play along.

“If it’s only mobile TV, we’re dissatisfied, we’re not happy with it,” Bill Stone, the Flo unit’s head, said in an interview. “There are going to be a lot of revenue streams off this service.”

Stone says the strain on mobile-phone networks caused by ballooning demand for video and data should make Flo attractive to service providers and phone makers. Flo works on a system using airwaves that Qualcomm bought in federal auctions. Flo- enabled devices have separate radios and chips that enable them to receive the service from Qualcomm’s transmitters. “One person streaming a video takes up as much bandwidth as 100 cell phone calls,” said Stone. “Networks break down and can’t handle it. For me, whether I have one or 1 million users, it doesn’t matter.”

Distributing magazines with high-resolution pictures is another area where Flo can send content to mobile devices more effectively than wireless-service providers, Stone said. His network would broadcast the data to everyone at once, with only handsets that have subscriptions enabled to access the files.

On June 7, Cupertino (Calif.)-based Apple said it had $60 million in iAd commitments from marketers, including food and personal-care product maker Unilever (UN), electronics retailer Best Buy (BBY), and satellite-television service provider DirecTV (DTV). Unilever, whose first iAd made its debut in July, is "extremely happy" with the results of its ad campaigns, Rob Master, the company's North American media director, says in an interview. More than 20 percent of people who click on Unilever iAds—which feature video and an interactive game—check out the ad a second time, he says.