• by John Gaffney , March 13, 2003

Was That WiFi, Or French Fries?: Word out of McDonald’s HQ says the hamburger giant will test wireless internet services at locations in three cities. You can pick from the various theories being spouted about why this is happening at this time. McD’s is, after all, on a slide matched only by The New York Knicks season and Michael Jackson’s career. To me it says that McDonald’s is going to try harder to make its restaurants a place to hang out. A place where anyone from a harried executive to busy soccer mom can eat and get some work done. In fact, it sounds a bit like McD’s may be stealing some riffs from the most successful retailer (in my opinion) of the past ten years, and that’s Starbucks. Starbucks is built for the in-store experience. It’s happy to deal you a coffee to go, but they want you to get comfortable and maybe spend some more money in the place before you leave. If McDonalds can improve the inside experience at its locations, they can certainly drive the traffic to get people to visit. McDonald’s has one thing that its competitors don’t: huge ad budgets. That’s a weight they need to keep throwing around liberally.

More Wi Fi: Believe it or not, I’m hearing a lot of good things about the telecommunications sector spiking a huge ad revenue increase this year. It makes sense. I expect AOLs Broadband campaign will be countered with a similar budget by MSN. Sprint, Verizon, Cingular and T-Mobile have to spend on the merits of their cellular service or die.

Parting Shot: I’ve only read a few pieces on the lack of scholarliness of “blogging” and I’m already done with it. The blog is here to stay. It’s here to stay like downloading music. Get over it.