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Hotspotio lets you share your WiFi connection with friends in return for favors

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Hotspotio WiFi for Favors featured

Fresh out the Google Play Store is an all new app called Hotpotio. Similar to apps like Instabridge that allow you to quickly and easily share your WiFi with friends and acquaintances, Hotspotio provides a fun new twist: favors.

Since nothing in life is free, Hotspotio allows WiFi sharers to request specific favors (non-sexual) in order to gain access to their WiFi network. Available options range everywhere from hugs (lame), drinks (awesome), to a likes or follows on Facebook/Twitter, or you could even request someone sing you a song. Less of an actual requirement, and more like a fun way to share your WiFi connection with others, sharers are also granted another huge benefit — access to not only their friends WiFi networks, but friends of friends as well. You can even make it public to all Hotspotio users if you’re feeling especially generous.

Hotspotio WiFi sharing network

Think of Hotspotio like one big, WiFi swapping, hippy community. You can even turn your Android device into a portable hotspot, sharing your phone’s internet connection while hanging out at your local coffee shop. Don’t feel comfortable sharing your WiFi connection with strangers? Settings in the app allow you to select who you want to share with, just don’t forget you’ll be missing out on a whole lotta free hugs. You can download Hotspotio for free right now in the Google Play Store.

[Hotspotio on Google Play]

Chris Chavez
I've been obsessed with consumer technology for about as long as I can remember, be it video games, photography, or mobile devices. If you can plug it in, I have to own it. Preparing for the day when Android finally becomes self-aware and I get to welcome our new robot overlords.

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14 Comments

  1. laaammmmeee

  2. my new hobo sign:
    “WILL TWERK FOR WIFI”

  3. I was incredibly excited by easier WiFi network sharing until I realized it was fiendishly tied to social networks. So long as something is tied to Facebook and those of similar ilk it will never have a place in my life.

  4. Set this up to where you could charge actual money and it would be a huge hit.

    Say for instance, you have some data cap space left on your plan. Turn on your phones hotspot and set a rate and cap then the phone will send the potential user to a login page when they connect to your hotspot. Could be used in conjunction with Google wallet too. Still a lot of details to work out but lots of potiental to earn a little extra cash.

    1. I’m just tryin’na get a free hamburger. Don’t care much for drinks. O_o

  5. Tech equivalent of carrying a cardboard sign that says ‘FREE Hugs’ …for WiFi

  6. No sexual favors?! PFFFTTT! I need a job! A hand or blow kind please in exchange, free WiFi

  7. I need a labia hug around my lower torso

  8. i still don’t see wifi sharing as practical. why would i want strangers on my secure home wifi network? and why would i want to destroy what little battery life my phone has, running a hotspot, that will help someone for all of 2 minutes while i happen to be standing next to them?

    1. Good wifi sharing is implemented at the router level, with a separate wifi guest network that has no attachment to your own personal network.

      Imho, the thing that really kills residential wifi sharing is dmca abuse, I don’t want to get warning letters and deal with that hassle if someone uses my network to download pirated material. If I could restrict the connection to so many Mbps on a separate SSID and didn’t have to worry about dmca I’d share my network.

      My home router already does the separate SSID, but has no way to restrict the bandwidth usage, so I leave it off.

      All of my friends already have my wifi password so I sure don’t need it for that.

      1. Guest networks do not provide absolute separation for a hacker. I could see hackers flocking to a service like this. Hey I want to send an anonymous sketchy threat e-mail, but starbucks has a security camera for the police, I know hotspotio!

        I’d be more worried about data caps as well, a good percentage of home isp’s have implemented data caps. Admittedly they are very high, but if you are torrenting and streaming HD video you can get close to them. They generally are around 150-500GB’s per month. Realize an hour of netflix’s highly compressed super hd 1080p can use almost 3GB’s of data, and you’ll see how it can start adding up

        Plus do you really want to sit down to a nice movie, and have to watch it buffer, because your “guests” decided to start using up the internet?

        and mobile… lets not even talk about mobile caps.

        1. I agree, if I had a data cap it would be non starter, as I don’t currently have a data cap on my home wifi, I’d be more concerned with their usage interrupting mine. But if I could limit it to say 3 mbps out of my 50mbps connection and didn’t have to worry about dmca violations or other court entanglements, I doubt I’d ever notice and share my wifi freely.

          1. What provider do you have?

  9. And this is an article why??

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