A big, powerful wild card just entered the movie distribution business. Warner Bros. Entertainment announced today it will begin distributing movies for sale and for rent through Facebook, beginning with “The Dark Knight.” Initially it will be available for rental for $3 or 30 Facebook credits. Ultimately, other Warner movies will be available for both rental and for purchase.

Heath Ledger in Dark Night

Facebook is already the fastest-growing video service, so adding movies and, one would presume, TV episodes, should accelerate that. Facebook was the sixth-largest video provider in January, according to ComScore, ahead of Microsoft, Turner and Hulu. Unlike Hulu or YouTube, Facebook (thanks to Zynga) already has a robust credits marketplace made up largely of people buying virtual goods for games like “Farmville” and “Mafia Wars.”

Hulu and Apple’s iTunes have plenty of content and have been working to add social functionality to their services. Why? Because while search is great, TV and movies are social experiences, and they believe that social connections should play a big role in the discovery of content. People want to know what their friends are watching, and Facebook is best positioned to facilitate that.

The big question is how far YouTube goes into movie and TV sales and rentals. Right now YouTube has a limited catalog of movies for rent, such as “Reservoir Dogs” for $1.99, and via ad-supported streaming, like Jackie Chan’s “The Young Master.” YouTube’s strategy seems pretty clear: It won’t pay big Hollywood fees for content. Rather, it’s looking to cultivate a new market for short-form video that exists largely outside Hollywood.

“The Dark Knight” isn’t a new release (2008), and Facebook appears to be getting the same terms as iTunes, which rents the film for $2.99 and sells it for $9.99. One thing Facebook (and Netflix) have that Apple doesn’t is a beachhead as an app on most internet-connected TVs.

Another way they’re similar: Facebook takes a 30% cut of credits transactions, just like iTunes. Still, if Facebook allows studios to sell their wares directly and set their terms, there’s no reason its catalog won’t expand quickly. Netflix shares opened nearly 3% lower on the Nasdaq the morning this deal was announced.

No surprise here. Facebook is going to start making a ton of money off their primary strength, shear number of people.

How do you feel about renting movies on Facebook?

Facebook is becoming an intriguing hot spot when it comes to receiving the latest information. On one end of the spectrum, we have the media sources that offer the latest local and world news. Conversely, it is also a spot for the latest updates on the personal lives of our friends. Today we look at five different tools that aggregate all of this content a layout that looks like a newspaper or magazine, which some people might consider more organized than how social media sites are designed. Read on to learn more about these applications.

Flipboard

Flipboard offers iPad users the opportunity to create a digital magazine experience from your profile on Facebook. Begin at a table of contents offering a variety of different social sites the application utilizes. Begin by simply connecting to your Facebook account. The app then offers all of the information shared by your friends and the pages you follow, in a layout that truly has all the attributes of a magazine.

The service makes it easy to access and comment on posts directly from within Flipboard. With a sleek design and layout, it serves as an alternative to check for updates besides using the Facebook application. I have read and heard of a few bugs and hiccups along the way which including page-loading time as an example. The application is a very popular selection though, and it even was named Apple’s iPad Application of the Year in 2010. Considering it is free, do you have much to lose? Give the application a try here.

LinkNotify

LinkNotify brings you links shared by your friends, as well as pages you follow, in a news headline format that makes it easy to stay current in a more time efficient fashion. Using the service, you can block any unwanted friends or page links, without permanently removing them from your news feed.

Overall, LinkNotify is most useful for those who follow a number of businesses and news source. For anybody who feels as if content from pages takes over their news feed at times, the free service presents the latest from shared sites in a way that is less overwhelming. It also, at least in my case, entices me to click on more of the content.

Besides page loading issues I have personally seen — I had to hit the refresh button on more than a few occasions — this service does deliver on its promises.

Newsbook

Newsbook is an innovative social media content aggregator that just launched this week, calling itself a “cheat sheet for the most popular news online.” The tool offers a worthwhile shortcut to finding popular trends on Facebook.

This app organizes the biggest media sources — including CNN and The New York Times — into convenient categories. Under each article, you will find the total number of viewers that have shared the item. This is makes the hot topic issues just a click away, and makes staying current more time efficient.

Overall, Newsbook is certainly worth a visit. In the chaotic way new information is often presented on the web, this content aggregator offers a simplified digital news experience powered and directed by all Facebook users.

Paper.Li

Paper.Li is an original concept, offering a Facebook newspaper comprised of various public posts built around a topic of your choice. Simply choose a title, a subject, which language you speak and within a couple of minutes your paper will appear.

Peruse your paper in six sections, as they would be organized in an actual printed edition. At the bottom of each update you will see the page or user that shared the information. While I was slightly confused as my initial expectations were that the content seen would be that from my own personal friends, I did quickly become just as intrigued by the information on the screen.

Paper.Li is a creative application that adds a worthwhile spin to viewing the world of Facebook from a vantage point of a newspaper. Take a glance at hot topics surrounding your specific interests, and check back on a daily basis for updates. If you do not mind your news updates being a bit random, you can certainly find interesting information on the application.

Thanks to allfacebook.com for this great list. I personally love Flipboard. Tell me what you think of the sites after your visit.

In other words, go ahead, leave a comment below

How age, income and ethnicity affect time spent social networking

The Nielsen Company reported in June that, on average, the global consumer spends about 1 in every 4.5 minutes online on blogs or social networking sites. According to a report by market researcher Morpace, among US Facebook users time on Facebook rises to 1 in 3 minutes spent online.

Unsurprisingly, despite Facebook’s growing appeal to older users, 18- to 34-year-olds spend the most time on the site per week, at 8.5 hours out of 22.4 spent online. Weekly Facebook time drops to 4.6 hours among users ages 55 and older, representing a lower proportion of that group’s average of 21.5 hours per week on the internet.

Broken down by race and ethnicity, Morpace found Facebook usage heaviest by Asians. Not only did that group spend the most hours per week on the site, but they also devoted the greatest percentage of their weekly internet time to Facebook (39.6%, compared with 35.1% among blacks, the second-highest group). Hispanics spent the fewest hours on Facebook, and even compared with their low average time online came in last.

Another great article by Mashable. Please leave me a comment below if you enjoyed this post.

[img credit: Markus Bollingmo]

My comments: Does this surprise anyone? (now of course, WE don’t do any of these things…right everyone?)

By no means are Twitter and Facebook perfect: You might wish that Facebook made it more intuitive to hide FarmVille or certain status updates. Or, maybe you wish that Twitter would introduce a new feature like nested tweets. Good news: For many of these website tweaks or suggestions, there’s likely to be a script you can download to fit the bill.

Here are my top eight picks for Facebook and Twitter add-ons. Many of these solve common user gripes (such as not knowing to what site shortened URLs will bring you on Twitter). Some, like “Facebook Fixer,” enhance the site and allow you to customize it beyond standard options. Do note that most of these scripts require that you first download Greasemonkey, and not all are compatible with every browser, so be sure to check the requirements before you download a script.

1. Facebook Fixer.

This script lets you customize your Facebook account and offers many features that are enabled by default, but can be enabled or disabled independently. Some of these features include: larger profile and album pictures; homepage customization where you can hide independent sections such as pokes, suggestions and “connect with friends”; and calendar integration, which includes a link on each profile that synchs birthdays with Google Calendar, or the option to export a file with all your friends’ birthdays, which can be imported into sites such as Google Calendar, Yahoo, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook and more.

2. Facebook Purity.

The Facebook Purity script cleans up your homepage and removes all newsfeed items from third-party games such as Mafia Wars and FarmVille, and zaps announcements on who’s become friend with who, who’s attending a certain event, who joined a group and who became a fan of something. Optional items you can block include: comments on a status, photo, photo album or link; tags in a photo or photo album; and event postings.

3. Unfriend Finder.

According to hated-by-Jason Calacanis, comScore, 30.8% of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, which is 8.3 points more from one year ago. Facebook grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347% jump.

11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser – an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year. Unsurprisingly, much of this growth has been driven by smartphone owners – while 30.8% of smartphone users accessed social networking sites, only 6.8% of feature phone users did so.

In the same period, Facebook was accessed by 25.1 million, MySpace by 11.4 million and Twitter by 4.7 million mobile users. Best of all, these figures don’t include access of the social networking services by the nearly 6 million users who do so exclusively through mobile applications.