Batman Complicates the Netflix-Facebook Relationship

Holy Deal Breaker, BatmanManaging a relationship between Netflix and Facebook was already complicated enough – but now Batman’s come in and mucked everything up.

Under a just announced deal, Warner Bros. will be making selected movies available for digital rental on each film’s respective Facebook page. The Warner-Facebook relationship starts today with “The Dark Knight.” That’s right, you’ll be watching movies on Facebook. Holy Gamer Changer, Batman! What will they think of next?

The timing for this is… well, awkward. Netflix just recently announced plans for “deep integration” with Facebook. I wrote a piece a few weeks back called “Netflix’s Tricky Dance with Facebook” that looked at the difficulties of a partnership between these two firms and even speculated about something exactly like what Warner Bros. just announced today. Little did I know it would happen so soon.

Ah, Facebook, the challenges of running a social network utility