As consumers buy fewer DVDs and spend more time online, movie studios are capitalizing on the opportunities provided by Facebook fan pages for their video content with apps that allow them to sell content directly to fans.
One example comes from F-commerce application developer Milyoni, which has developed a Social Cinema app used by Warner Bros., Universal and Lionsgate, where Facebook users can pay to watch films such as The Dark Knight, Johnny English, Scarface and Blair Witch Project. For 30 Facebook Credits, costing US$3, the movie is made available to users for a 48-hour rental window. Initially only available to viewers in the US., the studios are now rolling out their Social Cinema services to international fans, tapping into Facebook’s 600 million active international users.
In addition to viewing the content, Milyoni’s Social Cinema technology lets viewers add comments to specific ‘movie moments’, share clips with a friend, or watch together with a group. Discounts are available to groups of up to five friends watching the same film from different locations.
Seeing the potential of the popular social networking site, other studios have launched their own Facebook apps. Miramax has the exPerience app, which involves games which will unlock special, or exclusive content. This summer, Paramount debuted its Jackass catalogue on the site, and launched a Jackass ClipApp – a customizable app which allows fans to search and create clips from over 100 pre-selected scenes from the movie franchise.
More content owners are striking up digital distribution deals as consumption of content in traditional media formats continue to decline. According to PriceWaterhouseCooper’s latest Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, while digital currently accounts for just over a quarter of total industry revenues, it will account for 58.7 per cent of all growth in spending during the next five years as companies increasingly embrace multi-partner collaborations along the digital value chain.
Despite the proliferation of devices, the report sees a significant shift from payment models that involve buying and owning content that is stored on a device to a rental model, which streams content from cloudbased services. The latest host of Facebook movie apps underscores this change. It’s the “golden age for consumers”, as PWC notes, and content owners are increasingly aware of this.
During a keynote at MIPCOM in October, Miramax CEO Mike Lang said cross platform is the key to growing the digital transactions business. We think everything starts with the consumer. They’re not focused on windows or on what schedule they can watch something or on which device.”
When Miramax launched its exPerience app, Lang explained why they chose Facebook as the platform for renting out their video content instead of a specific Miramax streaming site by saying, “We wanted to fish where the fish are. We could have created the most robust Miramax.com in the world and other than my family members, who would be there?”
