Facebook announces Parse SDKs for Apple Watch and Apple TV, and Embedded Video Player API, oEmbed support
Nate Swanner / The Next Web :
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had already pushed into the living room weeks earlier with a tvOS SDK bringing Facebook login, sharing, and analytics to Apple TV apps; today's Parse SDKs extend that same toolkit to Apple Watch and fold the watch into the effort.
The announcement also opens Facebook content itself up: an SDK suite Parse had just open-sourced in August now gains watchOS and tvOS targets, while a new Embedded Video Player API and oEmbed support let any site embed Facebook videos directly.
First-order effects
- Developers building for the newly launched Apple Watch and Apple TV platforms can now wire in Facebook identity, sharing, and analytics through Parse rather than hand-rolling integrations on two unproven platforms.
- Publishers and site owners get a supported way to place Facebook-hosted videos on their own pages, turning their traffic into Facebook video views.
Second-order effects
- Every app that adopts these SDKs distributes Facebook's login graph and analytics telemetry onto wrist and television screens, extending Facebook's footprint without Facebook building those apps itself.
- Embedded Facebook video gives media sites an alternative to hosting their own players, shifting viewing time toward Facebook's ad inventory at the expense of independent video infrastructure.
Third-order effects
- If the SDK-plus-embed pattern holds, Facebook becomes a default layer across whatever hardware platforms emerge next, with developers standardizing on its identity stack and publishers on its video player before native alternatives mature.
- The trajectory visible here — SDKs seeding third-party apps, then Facebook shipping its own TV app by early 2017 per related coverage — suggests platform owners treat developer tooling as beachhead infrastructure for first-party products.
The trend: Facebook is systematically wrapping its identity and video layers around every new consumer screen — watch, TV, and third-party web pages — using Parse SDKs and embed APIs as the delivery mechanism.