Warner Bros. has announced that it will soon begin testing a service that will put a selection of their movies for rent or purchase through Facebook’s movie pages. The test will be christened with The Dark Knight, a movie you probably never heard of about some guy who dresses up like a flying mouse or something. Facebook users will be able to spend Facebook credits on the service, with a rental lightening their digital pockets by 30 credits, which translates to about $3 in real money. After a user rents a movie, they’ll have 48 hours to watch it in the browser, with the ability to pause and resume when logging back into Facebook at a later time.
One may initially think competing with Netflix and other streaming sites–especially on such a limited platform as Facebook–would doom the service from the start, but Warner Bros. makes a point that is a tad difficult to refute: Facebook is pretty much the premiere thing on the Internet (aside from cats), so they might as well get in on it while the getting’s good. On top of the install base, people don’t have to pay a subscription fee for the service in its current incarnation, and users will be able to share movies with their personal network of friends and family, generating hype, which can’t be a bad thing for Warner Bros.
(via Ars Technica)
