This month Facebook announced that Warner Bros will be using www.facebook.com to allow its customers to rent and stream films.
Launching with The Dark Knight, users will pay $3 (roughly £1.85) per to rent a film for two days. Crucially, if Facebook decides to use personal data to decide which films to suggest to you, the outcome will be scarily targeted, and the move into this sector makes Facebook a serious challenger to iTunes and Spotify.
However, the ability to pause, fast forward and rewind films will have a big effect on the current user experience. This may prove something of a challenge for Facebook, as users are accustomed to rapid browsing and not staying on a single screen for more than a few seconds.
Working as a Facebook app, another issue may be content management. Facebook currently has no facility on the site to track your apps or list them in order of preference, and with more apps available than we can count, it is likely that items such as this may get lost in the games, shop and other retailers all fighting for the space on your Facebook homepage.
Stores such as ASOS already allow products to be bought directly from the Facebook page, and at this rate, it won’t be long before Facebook controls your entire web experience. It’ll be interesting to see what rivals can come up with to even the scales.
