It’s a move that could very well help the social networking platform take another giant step toward digital immortality.
While a major announcement with grand fanfare didn’t accompany its arrival, Facebook is pacifying legions of iPhone, iPod, and iPad owners with the addition of HTML5 video playback support. Until now, Apple device owners had been shut out of enjoying videos posted to Facebook due to the social network’s Flash-centric video support model.
The transition from Flash-supported video to HTML5 video support represents yet another prominent platform shifting away from Adobe and toward Apple’s staunch anti-Flash posturing in the mobile landscape. Thanks to this development at Facebook, iPhone users, for example, can now watch videos that appear in chronological order in their friends’ newsfeeds.
The addition of HTML5 video support to Facebook is a not-so-subtle reminder to Adobe that Apple is a big player (probably the biggest player) in the mobile social space today. And, as a result, Facebook has no qualms about dumping flash in order to take its social network full steam ahead in the no-flash direction dictated by Apple.
