People who jokingly claim you could use Facebook as your sole means of entertainment really aren’t that far off the mark. Now you can rent movies on the social networking platform via Miramax’s new eXperience app.
Currently in a beta version, Facebook users in the US now have the option to rent any of 20 movie titles available through the app, while users in Turkey and the UK have 10 movies to choose from. France and Germany are both expected to have access to the app in the near future.
Users simply install the app, browse the available movie selections and pick which one they’d like to watch. If you want more information about a title, you can read a synopsis and even play a short clip. If you decide you’d like to watch the movie, it costs 30 Facebook credits to purchase, or $3 in real-world money. Users then have 30 days to watch the movie before it has to be “returned”. Note that once you’ve started to watch the movie, you must complete it within 48 hours.
While this is a neat addition to Facebook’s growing wealth of apps, one has to wonder if it’ll really catch on and become truly popular. Users can already rent thousands of movies on iTunes for about the same cost. Then there’s also apps like Queued for Netflix, Hulu Desktop and HBO GO to contend with. Still, although 20 titles isn’t very impressive, there’s no denying how easy it is to install apps on Facebook. For many users who are less comfortable with the idea of installing software on their PC, this might just be the movie rental app they were waiting for.
