The McDonalds approach to blogging
July 13th, 2009 | 
Author: Thanks to the free wifi service offered in McDonalds it seems to be attracting an increasing number of itinerant bloggers.
Almost every time we’ve been in lately (and, yes, we’re one of that band of McD bloggers whilst we wait for our ADSL connection) we’ve seen someone whipping out the laptop in a relatively quiet part of the restaurant. Thus far, our record is four separate surfers but I’m sure that’s a record that’ll soon be broken.
It’s not really surprising that they’re attracting these folk: after all that word “free” is quite a pull. What is more surprising though is that the majority of these people are lugging around full size laptops rather than running with the likes of my trusty Aspire One. After all, at under £200 for quite a usable machine it’s not out of the question to buy one pretty much just for the holidays and these days you can even get them “free” with some broadband packages.
Is it a worthwhile marketing strategy for McD though? Well, in that the restaurants obviously need a connection of some sort for their credit card machines it’s largely a no-cost service for them so there’d appear to be no downside in offering it. Moreover, few of the itinerant surfers leave without buying something so it would appear to be all upside for McD at the moment. Whether that would continue to be the case were significant numbers of surfers to start using the stores is another matter. It certainly works fine if there are a handful of people using the service but if there were, say, 10 or more then a) the seats are going to be taken up and b) the service is going to slow down. Still, at the moment, it seems like a great idea.
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Was this Mcdonalds in the UK? Wifi hotspots are everywhere now. I use my Samsung NC10 all the time in them. Soon I think it will be common to have free internet in most public places…..
No, McD in France. I think that on the whole it’s more common to see people surfing in McD here basically because they’re more likely to be on holiday and therefore don’t have their normal internet connection. Consequently, it seems quite an attractive marketing ploy for McD to pull in customers. However, already we’ve noticed that it’s less than appreciated by some of the McD staff who seem to look on said surfers as freeloaders, even when almost all of them have bought something from the store.