Just like Warner Bros. before it, Miramax has jumped into bed with social networking giant Facebook. The movie studio unveiled the beta version of its movie rental app "Miramax eXperience" for the site this week. Though only 20 movies are currently available, Miramax CEO Mike Lang promised big things on the horizon.
"Our goal with the Miramax App is to offer consumers a great user experience where they can watch movie clips and feature length films, play games and share the experience with their friends within the Facebook community," wrote Lang at the official Miramax blog. "The Miramax eXperience integrates into user profiles and news feeds and will hopefully become a part of the fabric of many discussions."
The app was developed over the course of eight weeks and relied on input from Facebook employees, Ooyala and AllDigital. It allows cross-platform play, so rented movies - which cost 30 credits, or $3 - can be viewed on a PC, TV or iPad. Like most Facebook apps, connecting to it requires sharing information, so renter beware.
Lang stated that he'd like the studio to have 150 million Facebook friends by 2014. Miramax has a long road ahead. So far the app has garnered just 21 active users and only 2o,ooo people are following Miramax's official Facebook page. Some films, however, fare much better. Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" has over 3,000,000 fans on the site. That sort of dedication to a single film is undoubtedly one reason for the relatively sparse initial offering, which also includes "Good Will Hunting," "Clerks" and "Gangs of New York."
As for fixing bugs and glitches, the executive referred to Facebook's controversial method of addressing issues as they crop up. "Our goal...is to emulate what Facebook does better than any company in the world - don't wait for perfection; launch and then iterate, iterate and iterate again," he said, encouraging users to leave feedback.
Lang says the company is looking into others options which would exponentially increase both the amount of content and the number of people who could access it. Unsurprisingly, this means getting on the cloud.
"Our ultimate goal is to give consumers the opportunity to buy films and store them in their own cloud-based digital locker - to then access the content anywhere they want, across ALL devices," said Lang. "Sounds like an easy concept - but one that we need multiple partners to help support to make possible. To that extent, we encourage our industry peers to join us in this vision - including the other great digital retailers and technology companies of the world. The time is now to make cloud-based movie ownership a reality for consumers."
Have you ever rented a movie through Facebook? What did you think? Let us know in the comment section.
