Facebook Link to .flv File

August 31, 2009 5:56 AM

I am trying to link directly from Facebook to a .flv file hosted on my server. How can I accomplish this? The example .flv file I have for this problem is here. In my country, connecting abroad is slow. Domestic servers are quick, that's why I need to do this. Thanks!
posted by Timen to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Is this something you want to post to your wall? Facebook won't let you embed FLV (or even SWF) files directly in wall posts. Your best bet is probably to post it to YouTube and then embed the YouTube clip.
posted by mkultra at 6:25 AM on August 31, 2009

A flv file alone is useless to a browser. At the very least you need a player of some sort. A common one is the JW FLV player. But this assumes you can embed flash objects (either directly with <embed> or by more sophisticated javascript based methods) into the page which in general you cannot unless it's your own site. The reason is that allowing plain users to use embed/object tags or arbitrary javascript opens a whole world of security nightmares for your site, so it has to be carefully controlled -- such as allowing embedding only from trusted, well-known sources like the youtube embedded player. I know nothing of facebook but I'd be very surprised if there weren't such restrictions.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:02 AM on August 31, 2009