Adobe just announced the launch of Flash Platform Services for Distribution. These new services will allow developers to make their applications more sharable on a variety of platforms, including a wide range of mobile devices. Adobe will give developers the ability to enable their users to embed applications on over 70 destination sites. In order to provide this service, Adobe has partnered with Gigya, a company that already has a lot of experience in giving publishers the ability to make their content sharable through social widgets.
As the Adobe team behind this product told us in an interview last week, for a lot of companies, making their applications sharable is still a major challenge. For a large number of these companies, posting an application in an app store is also often the only mobile distribution strategy. The Flash Platform Services for Distribution, however, aims to make this easier for developers.
On the mobile side, Adobe and Gigya will give users the ability to share content on a wide variety of phones, including Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. Users who want to install a sharable application on their mobile phones will simply receive an SMS message with a link to the application. The service will automatically detect the type of device and deliver the right version to the user. Developers can also give their users the ability to share iPhone versions of their applications – though obviously those have to be native iPhone applications, as the iPhone doesn’t support Flash.
Developers will be able to track the success of their applications through and Adobe AIR app that will allow them to measure distribution and customer usage. In partnership with Gigya, Adobe will also give developers the ability to assure installs through paid promotions and to monetize apps through cross-promotions.
Adobe also announced that it will launch another Flash Platform Service later this year that will allow developers to easily connect Flash applications written on top of Adobe’s platforms with a number of social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Developers won’t have to worry about the idiosyncrasies of a service’s API, but will be able to write their applications on top of Adobe’s social platform instead.
