Shockwave, on the other hand, is a multimedia platform used to add animation to web pages and to make the pages more interactive. Flash is commonly used to add streamed video or audio players, advertisement and interactive multimedia content to web pages. These RIAs can be played in Adobe Flash Player. Adobe Flash is a multimedia and software platform that is mainly used for creating vector graphics, animation, games and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Key difference: Shockwave and Flash are two different multimedia platforms from the same company, Adobe.