Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 12, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
To this end, the company, part of the Viacom group, launched its own service on the popular networking site Facebook yesterday, Monday. The application, called “VooZoo”, combines a video clip collection with a media player. Paramount is thus the first major Hollywood studio to respond to growing user demand for a short video format of the kind common on YouTube, for example.
“By chopping up our films, we want to spread our products as widely as possible,” the US newspaper Washington Post quotes Derek Broes, Executive Vice President for Digital Entertainment at Paramount. To satisfy their wishes today, consumers must be offered a broad range of ways to obtain the content they are looking for.
The growing demand for shorter videos, such as those found on YouTube, is particularly decisive in this context. Combined with the high user numbers of online portals such as Facebook, this opens up previously unimagined opportunities for film studios, the use of which is becoming increasingly interesting not only financially.
Broes cites so-called “viral marketing” as an example, which Paramount intends to use to build excitement ahead of forthcoming blockbuster films.
The VooZoo application presented by Paramount is the first attempt by a major Hollywood studio to accommodate the growing trend towards short video formats that can be accessed “on demand”.
Until now, the clips found on the Internet were generally those uploaded without authorisation and in violation of copy protection. Paramount’s initiative now gives users their first opportunity to enjoy a specific film excerpt legally as well.
VooZoo developer FanRocket hopes to attract a few hundred thousand customers to the service within two months. The company says it has already entered negotiations with other film studios
