Yesterday the blogosphere was on fire speculating Facebook signed a deal with Warner Brothers to rent videos when The Dark Knight Brand Page allowed users to rent & watch the movie on their page.

A Goldman Sachs analyst added fuel to the fire when he was quoted in the media, and Netflix’s stock was down 5.76% at the end of the day. Uhm…oops.

Turns out, Facebook does not have an agreement with Warner Brothers and will not be renting movies. Instead, the digital team at Warner Brothers built a Facebook app that streams The Dark Knight within their Facebook page if you pay $3 or 30 Facebook credits. Any old Facebook developer can build an app like this. [Don't panic, Netflix shareholders. The stock should soar today].

Now, I haven’t streamed a full-length motion picture from within Facebook, but I suspect the quality is not nearly as good as Hulu or Netflix – you know, sites that were built specifically to do this and have the infrastructure to support it. Additionally, Netflix is about $8 a month for an unlimited number of movies. The Dark Knight rental on Facebook seems pricey when you compare it to Netflix’s package.

All that said, I find this an interesting use of Facebook credits. While plenty of games on Facebook use the credit system, we haven’t really seen many brands integrate them successfully within Facebook. Target, Best Buy, Walmart and some smaller chains actually started selling Facebook Credit Gift Cards in store last year. The cards can only be redeemed on Facebook within games or apps that accept them as a form of payment (so you can’t buy a lawn chair at Target with them). Stats on their success rate are hard to find since we’re only 6 months in, so we’re paying close attention to this one.