• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, May 31, 2011

Sharing is the calling card in the current entertainment world. People increasingly desire to share thoughts and content with friends -- almost to a fault.

Facebook is now talking to Netflix and others about giving users the power to share content, photos, and, yes, full episodes of TV shows. This New York Timesstory says Facebook would not license content itself, but use the content licensed by its partners.

Facebook has lot of TV/media partners -- but how will it adjust to the monetization of full TV episodes into its sharing scheme? TV producers and TV networks must be scratching their collective heads. Surely, the right people will get compensated. Right?

But -- reading between the lines -- the biggest selling point for Facebook in convincing to TV networks to go along is increased marketing. Word-of-mouth marketing continues to be highly valued by all entertainment marketers.

Let's look at the best-case scenario: You are a network, and every one of the 9 million average viewers for your prime-time network show are tweeting about one particular episode they are recommending. All that is good press.

Now those 9 million people have sent that around to their friends who don't watch -- or rarely watch -- this particular series. That's some marketing punch you can't buy.

The next week the viewers of this TV series -- now say 11 million -- do it again. So the audience is growing -- but everyone may not be benefiting from this gain because some of these viewers are not paying any fees or watching any advertising.

Entertainment sharing continues to gain steam, almost of more importance to some than entertainment consumption.

We don't know the details of a proposed Facebook sharing deal with its media partners. But surely some limitations on sharing would be attached. We hope this last bit will occur -- all to give us more time to actually watch TV shows.