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We had an inkling that the rekindled relationship between Facebook and Apple, which will soon bring a deeply integrated Facebook experience to Apple iOS devices, would mean big things for not just the social network, but for consumers and for Apple’s developer community. Now we know for sure.

Wednesday, Facebook released a new beta version of its software developer kit (SDK) for iOS — the kit enables developers to integrate their apps with the social network — that will carry over the benefits of its native integration in iOS 6 to application developers.

“The new features make the SDK a natural extension of Apple’s iOS environment,” Facebook engineer Jason Clark said in a blog post. “After iOS 6 launches to users, the SDK will automatically use the native Facebook Login in iOS 6 when available.”

As Clark noted, the new release, SDK 3.0 beta for iOS, will allow app developers to seamlessly grab a device owner’s native Facebook login information to create a simple, no-fuss sign-up, login, or return experience, powered by Facebook, for their apps.

Here’s what it means for consumers: when they fire up an application running the new SDK, they’ll be able to sign in through Facebook with a tap — without needing to recall and manually input their username and password. The small tweak has profound implications as it should prevent user attrition, and result in applications more easily on-boarding new users and Facebook seeing more app activity yoked to its social network.

SDK 3.0 beta for iOS also introduces better user session management, pre-built user interface elements to help developers with common tasks such as displaying an app user’s Facebook photo, and better support for Facebook APIs.

Photo credit: fiduz/Flickr

Filed under: dev, mobile, social