了不起的社交网络，蝙蝠侠！Facebook推出视频租赁

    你会在Facebook上看电影吗？时代华纳公司（Time Warner，《财富》的母公司）旗下的华纳兄弟电影公司（Warner Brothers）很想知道这个问题的答案。该公司最近在该电影的Facebook影迷页上推出了《黑暗骑士》（The Dark Knight）以供观看。迄今，已有390万影迷表示“喜欢”，而且，这些影迷及其他Facebook用户只要花上30个Facebook信用币（相当于3美元），就能租看该电影48小时。但是，华纳兄弟也坦诚相告：目前仅在美国推出此项服务；只提供标清播放；用户分享体验仅限于在NewsFeed中发布该活动、点选“喜欢”按钮以及分享到Twitter上。鉴于Facebook目前提供的诸类丰富特性，上述服务未免显得过于简单了。

    但是，华纳兄弟此举引人注目的并非是其不足之处，而是它对内容编程的未来的意义。最近，华纳兄弟还尝试过其他一些非常规传播方式，在iPad、iPhone以及iPod上开发与《黑暗骑士》和《盗梦空间》（Inception）有关的应用程序。尽管这并非什么理想的解决方案：有谁会为了看部电影去下载一个基于苹果操作系统（iOS）的应用？但此举也明确地显示出，该电影公司希望尽可能地开拓市场。迄今，其电影应用已经覆盖全球35个市场，相形之下，iTune只覆盖23个市场。借助Facebook，华纳兄弟终有一天有可能覆盖从约旦和塞内加尔到博茨瓦纳和马提尼克岛的200多个国家的6亿多用户。同时，凭此举，它也成为首家通过社交网络放映电影的制片厂，用户无需通往第三方网站的外部链接或者往返于社交网络和第三方网站之间。

    乍听之下，这一切不免有些奇怪。因为用户在Facebook注册时，他们脑子里想的是用它与朋友和熟人联系，有时，这些人中还包括他们朝思暮想的理想约会对象。相反，观赏电影很可能并不在他们的目标之列。毕竟，有Netflix等网站能提供更棒的专业服务。对吧？

    但是，如果你深入思考一下，就会觉得华纳兄弟此举颇有几分道理。Facebook用户花在该网站上的时间是：每天平均要花上55分钟，每周6.5小时，每月1.2天。这么长的单个网站访问时间，只有处理电子邮件的时间能与之相媲美。而且，随着Facebook逐渐成熟，不断推出更多的供用户消磨时间的功能，这一时间还会进一步延长。鉴于此，内容提供商开始通过社交网站向用户播放电影，而不是逼着Facebook用户告别该网站，去访问外部服务或者站点，那无疑是一大访问壁垒。

    “在社交网络上提供视频租赁服务，让位于不同地区的人们共享观影感受，是个难得的机会。” Milyoni产品战略副总裁大卫•瑞克罗夫特表示。《黑暗骑士》Facebook观影和电子商务应用使用的就是Milyoni社交商务平台。这类项目的开发通常只需三天时间，但开发《黑暗骑士》的相关应用却花了30天时间。

    尽管已经迈出了坚实的第一步，用户界面不仅简洁而且反应迅速，但同时也引发了几个棘手的问题。我坚信Facebook观影最终会成为大势所趋，如果事实果真如此，那就会涉及到进一步细化的问题。用户是否必须登录到特定影片的影迷页面，才能观赏想看的电影？他们又如何知晓，某部自己想看的新片已经可以在Facebook上观看？

    随着越来越多的电影制片厂提供电影内容，用于在Facebook上播放，建立内容播放中心就显得至关重要，这样不仅能在某个中心地点聚集并突出显示内容，也能让用户及时获得最新消息。当然，这样的话，Facebook将在你的日常生活中占据更重要的位置。如果你是马克•扎克伯格的话，这可是天大的好事。

    Would you watch movies on Facebook? That's what Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner (parent company of Fortune), wants to know by offering up The Dark Knight for viewing on the movie's Facebook fan page. 3.9 million fans have already "Liked" it and they and other Facebook users can rent it for 48 hours for 30 Facebook Credits, the equivalent of $3. There are some caveats though: it's only available in the United States, only streams in Standard Definition, and sharing remains limited to posting the activity to the NewsFeed, "Liking," or Tweeting it. Pretty barebones at this point, considering the wealth of features Facebook currently offers.

    But the move is less notable for what it's lacking and more for what it means for content programming going forward. Recently, Warner Brothers also dabbled with other unorthodox distribution methods, by creating iPad, iPhone, and iPod apps specifically for The Dark Knight and Inception. Not an ideal solution -- who wants to download an iOS app for each and every movie? --but it does show that the studio wants to reach as many markets as possible. Its movie apps reach 35 worldwide markets, more than the 23 that iTunes covers. With Facebook, Warner Brothers has the potential to one day reach some 600 million users in more than 200 countries, from Jordan and Senegal to Botswana and Martinique. In doing so, it becomes the first studio to offer movie content within a social network. No outside links or shuttling to third-party web sites.

    It might all sound pretty strange at first. Because when users signed up for Facebook, they envisioned using it for connecting with friends and acquaintances, and in some cases, people they're dying to date. Watching movies probably didn't register. After all, there are better, dedicated services like Netflix to handle that, right?

    But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Facebook's userbase spends an average of 55 minutes a day, 6.5 hours a week, or 1.2 days a month on the site, a significant chunk of time only rivaled by email usage, and one that will grow even further as Facebook matures and introduces more time-sucking features. Rather than force Facebookers to leave the network to some external service or site, a huge barrier of entry in and of itself, content providers are bringing programming to where the users are.

    "It's a great opportunity to bring a shared viewing experience back to folks who have gotten geographically dispersed," says David Raycroft, VP of Product Strategy for Milyoni, the social commerce platform used for the Dark Knight-Facebook viewing and ecommerce app. Development of such projects can take as little as three days, though in this case, The Dark Knight app took 30 days to develop.

    While it's a solid first step -- the user interface is simple and responsive -- it also raises several thorny issues. Once the whole trend of Facebook movie streaming takes off, and I firmly believe it will eventually, there's the issue of fragmentation. Will users be forced to seek out movie fan pages to watch that particular flick? How will they know when a particular new movie becomes available for viewing?

    A content streaming hub will become vital as more studios bring content over to the social network, not only to aggregate and highlight content in one central location, but also to update users. Of course, in doing so, it brings Facebook one step closer to being even more integral to your daily life, which, if you're Mark Zuckerberg, is a good thing.