The number of Android apps with ties to Facebook - while already large - is likely to soar over the next few weeks.  Or the existing apps should get significantly better, at least, as the first official Facebook SDK for Android was released this afternoon.

Steven Soneff, who actually built the SDK for his internship project at Facebook, explained in a post on Facebook's Developer Blog, "We're open-sourcing tools and example code that make it simple for the thousands of Android developers to integrate Facebook Platform into their applications and reach a large and ever-growing mobile audience."

And at the moment (this SDK is just a beta version), Facebook platform features that can be taken advantage of include OAuth 2.0 support, the ability to make requests to the Graph API, and the opportunity to publish stories to Facebook using Feed forms.

This development is likely to result in people using Facebook more while on the move.  It might even boost the popularity of Android, too, considering how Facebook has become a central part of many people's lives.

The Facebook SDK for Android is available from GitHub if you feel like taking a gander.  Developers should probably do so sooner rather than later so as not to get left behind.