Warner to Offer Movies Through Facebook
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
You might as well say Facebook is competing with EA with games like FarmVille.
I have to assume they're competing with Apple's claim of 100-200 million "iTunes-linked credit cards." Since we've seen that Apple's monopoly isn't in volume, but in customers willing to pay, Facebook's consumer-used credit system is the most logical partner.
The same way we want Microsoft to stick with making operating systems, Apple to stick with laptops and music, google to stick with email and search, netflix to stick with movies, etc. I think facebook movies may very well flop just like google buzz did in light of a company that specialized in it (twitter).
I was also going to say that I could see how microtransaction movies would be easier to manage than a netflix subscription. But I would argue that netflix is a one time payment with unlimited movies which is actually easier to manage than a lot of microtransactions.
It also wasn't easy to actually find and came with this odd warning "offer not valid in all states".
I wouldn't be worried (yet) if I was Netflix.
It's an interesting test, and I can see people building real apps like a Netflix competitor on top of facebook's infrastructure. I can't imagine it will work as a facebook app - the way the Dark Knight is built.