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Adobe speeds Flash to Tweekbook, mobiles

Roll up and roll out service

Adobe Systems is rolling out services to ease deployment of Flash-based games, media, and apps on various social networks and mobile phones.

The company will usher in the first of its Adobe Flash Platform services with a distribution manager that pumps Flash content and applications to more than 70 social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. The service will also deploy to Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 devices and Apple's iPhone.

Adobe has teamed up with social-networking widget specialist Gigya so that Flash-based applications can be distributed on the web, to the desktop, and to mobile devices - and be shared.

With Gigya, Adobe's distribution manager will serve up metrics to measure downloads and use. Metrics cover unique users, impressions, interactions, numbers of installations, viral grabs, and how long an application stays on a users' social network page.

Adobe has also announced plans for its second Adobe Flash Platform service, which will enable applications to be deployed to different social networks without the authors needing to re-build code for the sites' different APIs and architectures.

The social service, due in beta later this year, sees developers write to APIs on an Adobe server, which will deal with talking to the social networks. The idea is that Adobe abstracts away the complexity, while developers need write a single version of their applications.

Despite the arrival of Microsoft's Silverlight, Flash dominates the field for online games, ads, and entertainment thanks to its length in the field and the rise of networks like YouTube and social networks. These have seen even more content created in Flash and shared.

But it's becoming increasingly challenging for Flash authors to roll-out to different networks or offer a single build of their applications, according to Adobe. Flash developers have asked for help in the Adobe tools to overcome this, the company said.

Adobe will charge $1 per install of an application - a price the company feels people will pay in the name of distribution in the broadest possible market.

Adobe platform services product marketing manager Puneet Goel told The Reg: "In a lot of cases... people want assured distribution. People aren't looking for new applications. We can deliver up to tens or thousands of installs for those applications."

The distribution service will add code for a button or a menu to their Flash code using Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, or Flex Builder. When a user buys or clicks on the button or menu in the application they will deploy on their social network of choice.

On phones, users will get an SMS message to their device that links to the application and downloads the relevant version to their Windows Mobile or Symbian device. For the iPhone, a link will take the user to the listing in Apple's App Store and users can install from there. ®

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