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Furthermore, the service helps you learn more about your customers. You will see gender and age information, their originating country/town, languages they are using, etc. (this information is provided by Facebook).
Technical implementation:
When we send the customer to your Facebook page we give a FULL internet access (with limited bandwidth) for 5 minutes. This is because Facebook cannot be whitelisted as it uses dynamic addresses and domains which are vary based on the visitor's country and other preferences. The customer has 5 minutes to log in to Facebook and LIKE your page. If the LIKE process is not completed within 5 minutes, the customer is forwarded back to the splash page where he/she can try again. If the customer cannot complete the task after 3 tries, the internet access will be blocked by 24 hours by default to prevent abuse (24 hours can be changed by you in the Control Center).
When the customer successfully LIKEd your page, he/she is forwarded back to the splash page where you can gather additional information through Data Capture. Then if the customer accept the terms he/she is given a full internet access for the period you choose.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For this service you must add www.apple.com to the allowed list, otherwise customers with apple devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, OSX Snow Leopard) won't be able to use the service. The setup command is now automatically add it in case of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL now if you run it. Other solutions can be found here. Unfortunately dd-wrt only resolves domain names to IP addresses when chill starts, but large websites like apple.com are using dynamic IP addresses for websites which are changing continuously. Therefore DD-WRT is NOT RECOMMENDED for the Hotspot FREE SOCIAL service as it may not work for apple devices.
Future Plans:
We will add several new options to Hotspot FREE SOCIAL within a few weeks. This will include an option to have a custom message posted by the customers' wall like: 'I am enjoying free Wi-Fi at Joe's Cafe.'
Furthermore you can request permissions from the user to have an access to his/her personal details like name, email address, etc.
Pricing:
Hotspot FREE SOCIAL is starting from $9.90 per month. For this money you can get max. 50 likes per month. Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 300 and 600 are also available.
Upgrade options:
If you are using Hotspot FREE SPLASH (which is now known Hotspot FREE BASIC), you can easily upgrade through the Control Center > Manage > Locations > click on name > Modify Hotspot Data > upgrade banner will be on the bottom of the page. If you want to switch from other packages, please write us a Help Desk ticket at http://help.hotspotsystem.com and let us know which package you would like to use (50,300,600).
Free Trial for New Locations:
Once you choose the Hotspot FREE SOCIAL as your business model, you can try out the service by sending customer to our Facebook page (which is the default option). After you pay the subsctiption fee you will be able to set your Facebook page from the Control Center > Modify Hotspot Data > Social Settings.
