Hollywood giant Warner Bros is keen to get a shoe in on its competition in digital delivery of its content by being the first movie studio to a rent a movie on Facebook. The studio is describing the move as a test at this stage to assess the viability of delivering content through this sales channel. As you are no doubt aware, social media has taken marketing in companies by storm these past few years and they are all to keen to experiment with the phenomenon to give their content, products and services exposure.
The movie being used in the test is Christopher Nolan"s widely acclaimed Batman flick, "The Dark Knight". In the unlikely event you haven"t already seen the film, you should do so as it earned Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar as "The Joker". If you"re interested in trying out the rental, you can do so by visiting this page. Whilst watching the movie, you can also interact with other Facebook users who are watching the film at the same time. It will set you back 30 Facebook credits or $3 USD.
Warner Bros. plans to offer other films to rent and purchase in the coming months via the social networking site. If successful, it is highly likely that other movie studios will follow suit. Content producers are increasingly diversifying into other distribution methods, moving away from just solely physical media for home viewing. Cinema admissions remain at an all time high, with figures showing that here in the UK 15.2 million people attended, a rise of just over 4% from the previous year. DVD sales, however, (not rentals) are in a very slow rate of decline as consumers diversify into consuming content from a wider range of digital distribution channels to a variety of different devices.