For all its success as a broad-based social network, Facebook has struggled to get mobile users to register their locations, as tens of millions of people gleefully do throughout the day on rival Foursquare. Now Facebook is testing a new incentive: Free Wi-Fi for users who “check in” with their location.
Facebook confirms it is running a test in which it supplies free Wi-Fi routers to local businesses and the businesses, in turn, offer their customers free wireless internet to users who check in on Facebook from the business location. After checking in, the user is shown the business’ Facebook page. (Business owners also have the option of giving passcodes to certain customers who they want to exempt from the Facebook check-in requirement, according to Inside Facebook.)
“We are currently running a small test with a few local businesses,” a Facebook spokesperson says in an e-mailed statement.
The upside here for participating businesses is increased visibility on a sprawling social network. The upside for Facebook is that more users will check in and more businesses will create Facebook pages, a common prelude to buying ads.
The big unanswered question, meanwhile, is whether trading Wi-Fi for check-ins can help Facebook gain a meaningful amount of ground against Foursquare, which has successfully penetrated venues like bars and white tablecloth restaurants where users aren’t particularly interested in Wi-Fi access, making do with slower cellular networks to check their email and see what their friends are up to. Will Facebook’s Wi-Fi offering end up ghettoized in some small percentage of cafés, or does it have the potential to dominate all the places people get online with their computers and devices?
That, presumably, is the question Facebook hopes to answer with its tests.
