Holy Social Network, Batman!

The prospect of watching the movie "The Social Network" through the network that inspired it came a little closer today, with film studio Warner Bros and Facebook announcing an agreement to make Warner's films available for rent via the Facebook website (albeit only the US right now).

The first movie available will be the 2008 Batman movie The Dark Knight, which will cost users 30 Facebook credits, or $3, to watch any number of times across a 48-hour period.

Warner Bros may be the first company to choose to distribute its output on Facebook, but don't expect it to be the last.  The company says the venture is, at present, just an experiment, but it does plan to release more titles both for rent and to buy in the near future.

Short-form video clips are already very popular on Facebook, but this is the first time that users will be able to pay for legitimate movie content.

Facebook is clearly looking to this new venture to provide a source of revenue outside of advertising, which currently generates more than 90% of the site's income.  Facebook Credits signalled the first attempt to reduce this dependency on traditional internet marketing, and Facebook would love to be able to make Credits work outside of virtual sales for gaming.  Sources suggest that Facebook will take a 30% cut from users payments.  This won't add up to much for a while, but given that the deal will give Warner Bros exclusive access to Facebook's 500 million users, we can safely expect to see competitors making a similar move.