As QR Codes start to make an impression on the world of marketing, we are witnessing a number of people developing some truly innovative uses for the humble QR Code. In this post, we feature two of the best applications that we’ve come across from the QR community over the past couple of months. It’s becoming very clear that as companies and entrepreneurs wake up to the potential to link the physical to digital in a mobile environment, there’s a stampede towards developing innovative ways to apply QR Code technology. The applications we look at in this post are really just the beginning of what will come as QR Codes hit the mainstream.
X Marks the Spot from Terence Eden
Location Based Services (LBS) are all the rage at the moment and are likely to continue to grow as the ‘check in world’ spreads through the likes of Facebook Places. The problem, which Terence has tackled head on, is that there are a number of LBS products out in the wild, all of which require you to fire up a proprietary app on your smartphone to enable you to check-in. Before Facebook Places was launched, the likes of Foursquare, Gowalla and Rummble already had a massive and active fan base. These are loyal fans and actually the number of sign up’s to Foursquare and Gowalla has continued to grow even in the countries where Facebook Places has been launched. What this means is that we are unlikely to see a Facebook monopoly when it comes to Location Check-Ins – what we will see is the likes of Foursquare, Gowalla, Rummble and many others happily co-existing in the LBS world. Not only that, but many people are known to support more than one LBS, so the thought of opening up multiple apps and performing a check in for each is not a great user experience.
The solution Terence has been working on ‘X Marks the Spot‘ (a much better product name than Gowalla by the way), removes the need for multiple apps for a LBS check-in. The XMTS check in process centres around the use of a location specific QR Code, which once scanned will take you to a Mobile Site with each of the LBS services for that location listed on the landing page. It’s then a simple process of selecting the LBS you want to check in with and hey presto – check in complete!
As a proof of concept, here’s the XMTS QR Code for the QRazystuff.com HQ which Terence kindly produced for us.
Here’s the presentation for X Marks the Spot Terence delivered to BarCamp Brighton 5 in October of this year. You can also download the audio to accompany the presentation here
Terence is at the forefront of the UK’s evolving Mobile Tech industry and has been working in the world of QR Codes for sometime. He’s an active blogger and someone you should definitely connect with. Follow him on Twitter and don’t forget to sign up to his Blog as well.
Facebook LIKES from Likify.net
With just cause, Marketers are obsessed with generating traffic to their Social Media sites. It’s a no-brainer that Social Media not only influences purchases, but can also have a significant impact on brand perception. This and no doubt many other factors have created a desire to drive brands to the likes of Facebook & Twitter in their droves.
Word of Mouth is recognised as the most powerful form of marketing. In Social Media, the closest you can get to a personal recommendation is probably a Facebook LIKE for a brand. When you LIKE a page, you are telling your friends and potentially their friends, that this is a Page/Brand that you are happy with and want to share with the world – a marketers dream!
The vast majority of Facebook LIKE actions are currently done whilst someone is sitting in front of their PC (supposed to be working), but what happens when you are out and about and see something or come across a brand you want to connect with or just shout about on Facebook? As the world becomes more mobile, the ability to LIKE ‘things’ or brands whilst on the move will become common place. In recognition of this, Belgian based company Boondoggle Lifelabs has created a new service called Likify
, which centres around using QR Codes to generate Facebook LIKE actions from your smartphone. The service is actually really cool, but at the same time relatively simple.
When creating a Facebook LIKE QR Code on the Likify site, you simply encode your Facebook Page URL, upload an image for the Mobile landing page and then generate the QR Code itself. Likify handles the techie stuff; automatically creating the Facebook LIKE plug-in script for your page and then neatly presenting the Facebook LIKE button on the Mobile landing page itself.
Click on the image below to enlarge it. Once done, give the QR Code a scan and slap a LIKE on the QRazystuff.com Facebook Page – it’s magic!
Whilst we acknowledge that the Likify service is a neat way of presenting mobile LIKE actions, it only really replicates what a QR Code can do if directed to a Facebook Page. The user experience may be simpler and perhaps better from a mobile than clunking around a Facebook page, but there’s no real magic yet. We’ve also seen reports on various blogs claiming that the Likify service will create LIKEs for products or ‘things’. The reality is that unless there’s a page on Facebook for the product, you can’t create a LIKE for it. Can’t really see a Supermarket listing every item they stock as individual Facebook pages..
We’ll be posting more news about innovation from the world of QR Codes soon as well as some of our own innovations, so make sure you sign up for the Blog Updates and don’t forget that all important Facebook LIKE!
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