Shared Objects: what you wish cookies were
Everyone knows that cookies are an excellent base for all kinds of customized user experiences as well as decent metrics and simple tasks like remembering user names and passwords.
On the other hand, we have Shared Objects files, Flash's cookie equivalent. These files, stored locally just like cookies, make your old cookies seem archaic and useless.
The first main difference is an important one. Cookies are governed by the browser. Users can set them on, off or "ask me" in a browser preference for all sites. With Flash, when users agree to download the Flash player, they are also agreeing to give any Flash application the ability to read or write Shared Objects.
This is a serious ethical consideration for any marketer, as you'll see that Shared Objects can be truly rich and responsive in a way cookies can't touch. See for yourself, and do a search on your computer for .sol files.
You will be shocked by how many sites are writing Shared Objects files to your computer. Like cookies, these aren't malicious. But it's easy for users to be completely unaware of their existence.
I'm using this as a preface because cookies look utterly 2D when compared to Shared Objects.
In cookies, a site can write or read. With Shared Objects, a site can read, react and write accordingly, building information in a single file across any number of actions or corresponding Flash-driven assets.
Think of it this way: When a user has a cookie from one place, it's like his name on a piece of paper, and with each subsequent visit, a site can read that piece of paper and act upon it.
With Flash's Shared Objects, it's like having a piece of paper with your name on it and giving it to a site, but then that site can react and write back new information that builds on your name. It can add a paragraph about the order of functions you've interacted with, or products you've seen, how many banners from that domain you've clicked on, and really any scenario you can script for.
You may have walked into a site with just your name on a blank page, but Flash allows you to fill up the page with useful information, act on that information, rewrite it, reorder it and build new experiences from it.
In a practical sense, Flash sites can write and rewrite notes on your computer about the actions you take, and then not only customize the experience of the site based on your changing list of actions, but on any other banners or widgets from that domain that you use as well, all the time using Shared Objects to build a rich history for meaningful experiences and metrics. In programmer-language, this is called building arrays locally.
At Publishing Dynamics, we use Shared Objects in all kinds of nifty ways, like counting visits and then changing visual displays based on that number. Already seen an intro movie to a site? It's recorded in a .sol file, which gets read back so you don't have to view it again, or we can show you the next logical message in the discourse of a site and record that in the Shared Object file so users continue to see new ways of experiencing content.
If a user stops a movie or experience in the middle, we can set a bookmark of sorts inside the Shared Object file so that when the user returns, the movie can pick up where the viewer left off.
If you're already using Shared Objects and can relate some practical uses, please share them in comments field below. It's always interesting to hear the creative ways people are taking advantage of this incredibly dynamic, built-in technology.