Seemingly happy with their market share of the social networking world, Facebook (News - Alert) has been turning their attention toward retailers and businesses more than ever over the last few months. The company is now apparently testing out a new service that will allow companies to tie their businesses into Facebook in a completely new way. 

Facebook has entered a new code in their programming, which developer Tom Waddington realized and soon figured something was up. While the developer believed the programming meant that businesses could “associate their public Wi-Fi hotspots with their Facebook page,” it turns out the new is actually a little bigger than that.


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Facebook confirmed that it is indeed testing a new service that has to do with a company’s Wi-Fi service, and the new program will allow those businesses to offer up free Wi-Fi to a customer that uses Facebook to check in at that location. The company released a statement about the new service recently. 

“We are currently running a small test with a few local businesses of a Wi-Fi router that is designed to offer a quick and easy way to access free Wi-Fi after checking in on Facebook. When you access Facebook Wi-Fi by checking in, you are directed to your local business’s Facebook Page,” the statement said. 

Quite a few companies are offering up free Wi-Fi as long as their customers actually login to their service. Some people might actually start spending more time at a business where all it takes is checking in using a social networking site which they would be inclined to use anyway. This seems to be a best of both worlds situation, as there will still be other ways to log into Wi-Fi if the customer doesn’t want to give away where they are by checking into Facebook.