There are already plenty of Facebook applications that use Adobe Flash. In fact, according to Facebook, 12 of the 20 most popular apps on the site incorporate it. But until today, developers were left more or less on their own when it comes to building applications that make use of the format.
Alas, the two companies have gotten together officially to make developing Flash applications – both on Facebook and off through Facebook Connect – quicker and easier with the ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for Facebook Platform.
What type of applications does this enable? According to some executives at Facebook and Adobe I spoke with this afternoon, on the high-end, it would essentially let anyone build their own version of the wildly popular CNN-Facebook Inauguration Day mashup.
This was custom built by Facebook (
) and CNN, and made use of AJAX to include status updates side-by-side with live streaming video, after users logged in using Facebook Connect. But with the new Flash libraries, Status Updates could be integrated via Flash, all within the same file as the video. Moreover, anyone could build something like this on their own.
On a slightly less grand scale, it also enables game developers to build far more interactive applications. For example, the UNO for Facebook game we featured last week is almost entirely Flash based. On the Facebook Connect side of the Platform, it could enable things like Web-based photo editors to include a built-in option for uploading to Facebook.
SproutBuilder, the Web-based service for building Flash applications, has already integrated the ActionScript () library to allow users to immediately publish their creations as either a Facebook application or a Web app using Facebook Connect. You can check out the details of their implementation in the widget below:
Given the success that Flash-based applications have already seen on Facebook, today’s announcement is an important one for the developer community. As an end-user, all of this probably doesn’t mean too much – other than you’ll likely be seeing more apps on Facebook and off that make use of Flash.
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