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QR codes are probably the greatest example of monkey-see-monkey-do ad spending in the last decade.

I have had large, international clients (you would recognize the brands) ask us to "invent something that uses QR codes" because their competitors use them.

I have seen the results of a campaign that was (and is!) huge in Sweden, involving many regional celebrities, and the total number of QR scans was in the double digits.

QR codes are a link. Plain and simple. Except they're not plain and simple, they're weird and complicated. They take you from one piece of content, which happens to be in real life, to another piece of content, which happens to be online.

And you need to include your URL and instruction text anyway, so it's not really providing a big advantage.

Some advertisers even use them ONLINE! That just baffles me completely.

If all smartphone cameras included QR readers by default, there MIGHT be a chance for them, after a lot of public education. But as it stands now, the incentive has to be huge to get over that initial barrier.

If QR codes really want to succeed they will have to become better than the alternatives: Google + memory, URL + keyboard, etc.




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