Facebook's Domination

The Wall Street Journal

“Warner to Offer Movies Through Facebook” 

By Steven Russolillo

Tuesday, Warner Brothers announced that its recent partnership with Facebook. This partnership will allow Facebook users to stream movies while on the website for three dollars or 30 Facebook credits for a 48 hour time slot. The two companies are still working out the future plans; but so far, “The Dark Knight” is available to users. More movie titles will be available in the next few months. The article states that users will have full use of the site while the movie is playing; one will be able to post comments and status updates. Being in the initial stages, this is only available to consumers in the United States.

This new addition to Facebook puts the social-networking site in competition with Netflix and the many other companies who are quickly jumping into this new media market. Currently, Netflix is falling due to the new competition. Netflix’s shares were down 4.9% on Tuesday. Finally, the article lists the recent doings of Amazon.com, Apple Inc., Google Inc., and Hulu LLC. Amazon has released a subscription based movie and television package. Nothing specific is stated for the other three companies cited above. News Corp. who is part owner of Hulu also owns The Wall Street Journal.

First off, I am kind of surprised that Facebook picked “The Dark Knight,” but I understand that its fan page has the most “likes.” This movie is a great movie for the start, but my initial idea for this project would be to offer a hot button newly released movie. I also find it interesting to see how Netflix is slowing down and decreasing. With new competition, Netflix will have to act fast. I do not have a favorite with this new idea of Internet movie buying. To me, I’d like to stay with iTunes movies or the good ole Blockbuster. As a side note, it’s been hard to watch the situation that Blockbuster is undertaking these days, but it is all because of this emerging market for Internet movies. I also wonder why Facebook is reacting to the curve. Why aren’t they setting the curve?

All in all, this is a fascinating conversation to have to people about the future of movies and movie rentals. The Internet is taking over our lives, but how much of a good thing does it take to make it a bad thing? Why are we becoming so reliant on the Internet? Will we forever hand the power to computer programmers from now until the end?