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.

The problem is application, QR codes are a very useful technology for trying real world items to digital assets. Where the problem lies is that most of that tying is just tying junk advertising in the real world to junk advertising in the digital world. Therefore there has been no incentive for people to actually learn why qr codes are useful and how to utilize them.

One of the best uses I have seen for QR codes was at Disney's Epcot center, during the food and wine festival. At this festival they have little kiosks set up that sell an array of items from an international location. This year they actually had QR codes on each countries sign, if you scanned it, it would bring up that countries page with a list of the items that the particular kiosk was selling along with some history and ingredients of the dish.

It was a well though out use for QR codes and I probably taught 30 or 40 people what QR codes where that night and how to use them, while standing in line. They offered value in their use of QR codes and therefore people where willing to expend the effort to learn how to use them. By the end of the night I saw a good deal of people scanning them.

I got just the site for you :) - http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com

hahaha I think that was one of the first links I read on HN. That's even better now.

Think about the friction:

- See ad, say for a movie, in the subway

- Take my phone out of the pocket

- Unlock it

- Find the app...

- Launch it

- Loading...

- Snap the QR code, which redirects me to the movie website

Versus:

- See the ad

- Google it later (if interested) when I'm in front of the computer

Versus what I do:

- See the ad

- Take a picture of it with the native camera-app (android).

- Get at home behind my pc and notice google has uploaded the picture to my private pictures and displays a notice about it on my homepage (google).

- Since I'm home anyway I can take a look at the site of the ad, etc.

If I'm in the subway and see and ad for a movie which seems really interesting and I don't want to forget I take my time in the train to lookup the movie, my calendar and schedule when I could go to watch it. Afterwards as that date comes closes I still have the choice to "not buy a ticket" or go trough trailers to see if it's really worth it. On the other hand, later on I often find out I don't have to to go see it, or other activities are more pleasing anyway.

Or (if subway has wifi) see the ad, google it straight away.

I don't think I've had a barcode reader app installed for a couple of years. I checked out one or two QR codes for the novelty when I heard about them but the novelty wore off quickly.

Do you remember everything you want to "Google later?"

If you don't remember it later, you probably weren't motivated enough to do the QR code in the first place.

Evernote does :-)

My most successful application of QR codes has been on my resume. Each resume had a unique link to a page on my personal website/portfolio with some extra info (PDF download, link to github/linkedin/etc) and some analytics so I could see if it was getting any hits and what other parts of my site people were looking at.

Didn't expect much to come of it, but I ended up getting some positive remarks on it in interviews.

Than again, I though about putting a minified link to a Cv-page with extra info and a way to interact right away. And if you're looking for a job in development/design a simple base encoded url that points to a page where you pinpoint shortcomings in the Site or App/Service of the business for which you made the Cv is for.

What's the most funny about QR codes is how high everyone's expectations seem to be of them.

When "fizzbuzz.com" will do, then a QR code is pointless. I think what most people fail to realize is that "fizzbuzz33.tk/AEC330912/m3/video/webpageforthisparticularcode.html" scans just as well without someone having to remember it or keep it straight.

Interestingly enough, the media the QR code is printed on tends to be essential to a useful deployment- many people print them on glossy surfaces, which reflect uneven lighting and make the scans fail.

They've been one of the strong points of my service- accomplishing an easy-to-generate, hard-to-forge, hard-to-anticipate, and hard-to-save-for-later way of distributing information and verifying the ability to obtain it.

I've posted this here before, but a joke project I've been working on has seen some success with QR codes... it is a toilet based social network though...stalltalk.info.

Personally, I think QR codes are a solution looking for a problem.

There was ONE time I found a QR code to be practically useful. My wife and I were shopping for car seats, and the higher end model had a QR code that scanned to watch a video about the safety features of the car seat.

I scanned the code, but the video took forever to load anyway, thanks to my carrier and/or the server the video was on.

Not the best experience.

Since you can pack ANY reasonably short text into QR codes, it works well for encoding a vCard (e.g. at the back of your business card), and we even encoded pure Perl code once for a job campaign.

So, there might be good reasons and use cases for using QR codes, but just encoding a URL probably isn't, looking at the conversion rate.

They do work for capturing secrets for 2-factor authentication into an app such as Google Authenticator, which implements an ISO OTP standard. Any site with username/password should really generate a OTP secret as QR code to scan into one's phone!

I would love to see some data on this subject. Especially the ad-related usage, that seems quite popular. I can see the point for verification purpose or something like that were people are forced to use it, but otherwise...

I'm guessing most ad firms don't want to give out that data...if clients see the conversion rate, they would probably be less likely to buy a QR package.

In Stockholm we have a candy machine with a QR code to download their app to make a purchase. If you want to app you have to use the QR code since they don't tell you the name of the app.

I feel I would just not get the candy..