In First for Studios, Paramount Offers Movie-Clip Spam

Hollywood has finally begun sniffing at the long tail.

Paramount Pictures (VIA) and application developer FanRocket this week debuted a new service for Facebook users that will enable them to send each other movie clips. A combination media player and clip library, the service called VooZoo aims to exploit the Hey-Remember-That-Funny-Scene-From-”Nacho Libre” phenomenon by providing users with access to clips from such movies and an easy means of bombarding their friends with them.

The studio will plug the DVD version of the movies after each clip is played in the hopes of driving further sales. An interesting strategy, but one analysts seem to have met with a raised eyebrow. “It’s one thing to go to a friend’s profile page and they have a clip of Eddie Murphy driving the Ferrari and go, ‘Oh, yeah, that was hysterical,’ ” said John Barrett, research director at Parks Associates. “It’s quite something else to say, ‘Hey, that was such a great scene I’m going to spend the next two hours right here in front of my PC.’ It would be some kind of clip that would make someone do that.”