Facebook is now encouraging brick and mortar businesses to share their Wi-Fi with customers in an easy manner, and a higher yielded one.
Walk-in customers or passers-by can simply tap into Wi-Fi hotspots offered by the participating business partners and clients can choose to manually check-in their whereabouts.
No passwords, no creation of new accounts is required. Simple. Straightforward.
What is the catch for the businesses? When customers check-in, their connected friends will be notified about that participating business' Facebook page as it will appear on their own Facebook News Feeds. Afterwards, Facebook will continue encouraging them to "like" the business' page as per its usual prompts.
Like how search engines work, more check-ins and engagement means better performance for the businesses in their Facebook search rankings and positionings on the Nearby tab (which runs on the Facebook mobile app).
Will this work as intended or allow free Internet to freeloaders? Please share your comments below.
Further reading:
https://www.facebook.com/business/facebook-wifi
