Like many people around the world I headed out to the theaters a few weeks ago to catch the latest Indiana Jones movie (is it me or are there no new ideas in Hollywood).  As you may have heard the movie had a huge opening weekend and continues to be on pace to provide a pretty good return for Mr. Spielberg.  In any case,  I heard from some friends who work at Paramount that they helped fuel the buzz with a very simple but cool Facebook application.  

The Wednesday morning before the movie hit theaters two days later the company provided Facebook users the ability to sent friends a digital version of Indy’s brown hat as a “virtual gift.”  Normally these cost $1 but Paramount offered 250,000 of them free-of-charge, and you guessed it, they sold out in one day.  

If you were lucky to get a hat from a friend it provided you a link to the movie’s Facebook page where you could find local listings to see the movie, download widgets, review reviews and check out movie photos.  The fun didn’t stop there, you could watch a video on “how to crack a whip like Indy,” check out behind the scenes photos and could upload your own videos.  

Today the site has nearly 90,000 fans – not bad for a movie page.  Most visitors I’m assuming checked it out, had a look around, and went on with their day.  Some came to the site and provided some reviews (some not so good at all) for others to check out.  

Given the low costs to create the Facebook page, and the smart use of assets from the movie production that would have probably just been deleted, I think this is a smart way for a company like Paramount to experiment a bit in the social media world to learn how to do an even better one next time.  It’s the experimental part of the new online world that companies need to embrace – try something out, give it a shot, see what happens and keep trying.  It’s fun, trust me. 