One of the bits of news hidden in this week’s flood of Facebook marketing and HTML5 announcements is that viral channels for native Android apps are coming to the platform in a few weeks.

That will finally bring the mobile platform to parity between Android and iOS. Developers for both platforms will be able to promote their apps in the news feed and through requests and bookmarks. If a person sees activity from a mobile app in their news feed, they’ll be driven to the app if they have it or the right page in the iTunes store or Android Market for downloading it. Facebook first unveiled these mobile channels back in October, but they were just for iOS and mobile web apps.

“We’ll be enabling native Android apps starting in the coming weeks,” said James Pearce, who joined as Facebook’s new head of mobile developer relations a few months ago from Sencha. “If you’ve already got an Android app, this is a  clear opportunity for distribution.”

Continue reading on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.