I'd consider advertising Facebook on a wifi hotspot as soon as they offer to pay for it by assuming liability for customers using that hotspot to share a bunch of film and TV show torrents. As long as courts keep pretending that an IP address is the same as a person, it doesn't make sense for small businesses with small pockets to offer free wifi.
Get Facebook WiFi for your business
51–60 of 293 posts
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#52This has been available for several months now. To answer a few questions I've seen, it uses a typical captive portal approach, so an unencrypted WiFi hotspot. Upon connection, you are redirected to an encrypted site with embedded Facebook account verification, at which point you can go wherever the Internet service lets you. The router typically has content filtering and also tracks Internet usage (bandwidth, visited sites, etc) as well as limits on visit length etc.
It is a useful option for merchants, as customers expect WiFi for free. Further, they expect it to be fast and that doesn't expose them to security risks. In other words, this gets expensive and difficult to manage. There are great solutions out there already, but they cost money - so the business case is based on marketing data. Email authentication would work, but it is difficult to gain much insight about customers, also you would need to give people access to their email server to setup their authentication. SMS doesn't work for people who don't have cell phones, or if there is poor coverage - also marketing data would be very difficult to gain. So, Social Media authentication (Facebook) turns out to be a really great option.
Obviously you have the choice not to use the service, but this isn't going away. Industry codes of conduct need to be set and I don't think they have. Privacy laws need to be understood and enforced. Retailer and coffee shop activities with this data haven't caused me much concern, but Facebook is another story.
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#53I am not really sure why so many people here are alarmed at the privacy implications. Google or Apple and your ISP / Telecom already know where you are at all times unless you are one of the very few people that don't carry a cell phone. Your ISP already knows every site that you look at from your home computer - how exactly is this different? Why is Facebook inherently any more or less trustworthy than any of these other companies? They are just happen to also know where you are when you optionally check in?
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#54Absolutely disgusting. These type of things just give me the willies. Everyday I see that Mr. Stallman was right, it's incredible!
Why is this "absolutely disgusting"? It's good for Facebook, it's good for local businesses, and it completely optional for consumers. I don't see any problem here.
Let's see:
My desktop machine is harvesting all sorts of information on me and Google can probably identify me with ease.
My mobile phone KNOWS what my contacts are from services I haven't even installed yet (WTF!).
Facebook tried to sneak in even more permissions on my Android device a couple of weeks ago (deleted it since).
It seems every time I lose more and more and more anonymity, and guess what: The 14 year old me from the past didn't care, but the older I get the more I want services to leave me the fuck alone!
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#55My friend owns a small tutoring business. They give out free wifi to all of their students. I think having this as an option would be a great way for them to build awareness of their local business.
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is this "absolutely disgusting"? It's good for Facebook, it's good for local businesses, and it completely optional for consumers. I don't see any problem here.
It is not optional for users who do not have Facebook.
I guess those users have the choice of signing up for Facebook, or not using the Free WiFi?
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#57http://www.zoottle.com/ does this, but gives you more control and is not limited to facebook login of course. It also gives you detailed stats (I didn't see any mention of getting visitor stats by FB wifi).
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good point. Honestly the most annoying thing will be the polluting of fb feeds with checkins (something it is possible to ignore from others I believe, but not prevent from posting yourself if you check in on fb... which is the whole idea of course)
That is a fair point, and it will be interesting to see how Facebook will deal with "feed pollution".
It already has this problem, and its solution was to default sort to "Top Stories" instead of "Latest Stories." A lot of accusations that it was a money-grubbing play for pay-for-performance, but I don't think they had much choice. They had to fix the problem of a few noisy people, pages or apps dominating users' feeds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5320207
Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#59Re: Get Facebook WiFi for your business
#60Other than Wifi, does the user get anything out of this deal?
Is another free hotspot worth giving up your data?
It would to me if they made wifi ubiquitous and drop dead easy to use.
That said, I don't think wifi is in the plans of the future. Eventually some other constant data connection will take its place.