Hyat Offers Free Internet For Becoming a Fan

The Hyatt Regency Cambridge has a new promotion running which provides residents with complimentary internet for 1 night in exchange for becoming a fan of their Facebook Page. However according to Atif Nazir who took the photo, the company appears to be tracking actual traffic and actions of the user rather than using any form of official integration with Facebook.

We’ve seen plenty of strategies used by companies to drive fan growth. As Dennis Yu wrote this morning, figuring out cheap ways to drive fans is important. In this case the hotel is willing to forgo $12.95 of revenue in exchange for a user becoming a fan. So far the strategy has resulted in the addition of 380 fans. While the company was avoiding $12.95 in revenue, it’s difficult to attribute that to the cost.

Running a wireless service within a venue is ultimately a flat cost. There’s no additional cost per user, although the fixed costs of a wireless system for a hotel that sleeps 10,000 people a night will be much more expensive than for one which sleeps 100 people each night. Anyways, the interesting strategy highlights just how far companies will go to obtain “Likes” and it also illustrates an interesting strategy for attracting new fans.

While the company could have just spent money on Facebook Ads, making your customers happy by giving them a free night of internet access surely is nothing to complain about.

source: http://www.allfacebook.com

Facebook Upgrades their Iphone App

Last night Facebook pushed out a new version of their iPhone application which includes a few upgrades including the ability to watch Facebook Video. While I’ve personally found that the Facebook iPhone application doesn’t load properly, I have a feeling that it may have to do with the number of friends that I have on the service. Other upgrades with the new application include the ability to view and write on walls of events, and photos that are uploaded are now 720 pixels wide.

Another feature that I hadn’t realized was available previously is the ability to change between the feeds that you are viewing. For example, you can now filter your feed by friend lists. While it’s not a huge upgrade, it shows that Facebook is at least continuing to develop the application despite Joe Hewitt, the original developer of the application, quitting development on the app.

As MG Siegler pointed out, the application is not free from flaws. On my own iPhone the Facebook application simply doesn’t function properly. When I try to upload images, it takes 10 times of the application crashing before I can get it up and running properly. While Siegler’s primary complaints surrounded the lack of iOS4 and iPad support, my only complaint is that the application simply doesn’t work often and can be pretty slow.

Anyways, Facebook is clearly dedicated to at least pushing out updates to the application, so I’d expect to see additional applications, including an iPad app at some point in the near future.

source: http://www.allfacebook.com

Why you’ll never have to pay for Facebook

Millions of Facebook addicts worldwide worry that someday soon they’ll have to pay to use the site.

If you go to Facebook.com and search for the terms “Facebook free” or “Facebook charge,” you’ll find hundreds of groups with names like, “If 1 Million People Join Before 9th July 2010 Facebook Will Stay Free!” or “If Facebook Charges A Fee We Will Discontinue Using It.” Some of these groups have dozens of users, others have thousands.

During a recent press conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said while Facebook users do care about privacy, the question of whether or not Facebook will eventually charge for its service is actually a much bigger concern among the site’s 500 million users.

But are these fears justified?

No! Facebook will never charge you to be a member and use the site.

Don’t take it from me. Here’s Facebook spokesman Larry Yu on the issue:

“We have absolutely no plans to charge for the basic service of using Facebook.”

He continues: “Last year we saw a similar rumor circulating that Facebook was going to begin charging $1.99 to use the site, but this year we’re hearing that fee increased to $14.99 with the spread of this rumor. We look forward to hearing what Facebook might be rumored to cost for use next year.”

If you press Facebook employees on this, they will tell you the reason they will never charge for access is that putting up a paywall runs counter to the company’s mission to make the world more open and connected.

But even if you don’t buy that idealistic hoopla, you should understand Facebook has a deep profit motive to never charge you for access.

Why?

Because Facebook makes its money bringing together as big of an audience as possible and then selling that audience’s attention to advertisers. It’s a business that works. Facebook should bring in as much as $2 billion in revenue this year. That’s more than twice as much as Facebook brought in last year. If Facebook started charging users, its membership would start shrinking fast — and so would its revenues.

So while Facebook may charge you for certain bonus features, such as gifts for your friends, or credits to play games like Farmville, it will never charge for basic access to the site.

Why then do people worry Facebook might start charging soon? Probably because Facebook users feel like they’re getting something valuable for free, and everybody knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Just remember: The fact that you keep coming back to Facebook makes it easier for Facebook to sell more ads — and make more money.

Your lunch isn’t free, it’s sponsored.

source: http://www.cnn.com