Over the last few years I have found myself defending QR codes in different conversations. While huge in the rest of the world, QR codes were never embraced in the west. Aesthetics was one that I had heard multiple times (“They are so ugly”) but they solved a real problem: bridging the offline world with the online one.
For whatever reason, neither Apple nor Google devices ship with a default QR code reader. Apple’s default camera app has some image recognition built in which lets you scan iTunes gift cards, but neither Apple nor (more surprisingly) Google showed any interest in QR codes. (Update: Apple added QR support for the default camera app in iOS 11)
But QR codes have snuck up in our society in the last few years. Some of these aren’t normal QR codes and maybe deserve their own label (scan codes?) but the idea remains the same: a graphic that codifies text that a scanner (camera) can read from a distance.
- Snapchat popularized the idea with their Snapcodes that let users add other Snapchat users as friends.
- Twitter, Kik, Facebook Messenger and Google Allo followed and now scanning a code to initiate a connection is starting to become normal.
- Apps like the desktop experience for WhatsApp and the rumored upcoming desktop experience for Google Allo use QR codes to authorize their desktop accounts with the mobile ones
- Airline and train tickets are using QR codes for their mobile boarding passes.
- Windows’ error reporting
Today, at F8, Facebook’s big developer event, they announced that Messenger will now support their scan-code, what they call Parametric Codes, which you’ll be able to use to do all sorts of things from friending to payments (offline payments via scan-codes is a big deal in China, where Messenger is taking a lot of its feature development cues from).
As happy as I am to see the return of these codes, the proprietary nature of each of them is a little bit of a bummer, but hopefully they will make the idea of scanning a code to connect with the real world more mainstream.
Update:
YCombinator Blog has a very interesting article on the rise of WeChat, but this section on QR codes is especially interesting
WeChat’s elevation of the QR code as a link from the offline became the lynchpin for China’s online-to-offline boom in 2015. Previously, to engage with a service or brand, a user would have to search or enter a website address. WeChat’s Pony Ma says of QR codes, “it is a label of abundant online information attached to the offline world”. This logic explains why WeChat chose to promote QR codes in the first place. QR codes never took off in the U.S. for three key reasons: (1) the #1 phone and the #1 social app didn’t allow you to scan QR codes. (2) Because of this, people had to download dedicated scanner apps, and then the QR code would take them to a mobile website, which is arguably more cumbersome than simply typing in the URL or searching for the brand on social media. (3) Early use cases focused on low-value, marketing related content and at times was merely spam. So, even though QR codes would’ve been U.S. marketers’ dream, it was a few steps too far to be useful.
With the established adoption of QR codes, WeChat launched “Mini Programs” as an extension of WeChat Official Accounts designed to enable users to access services in a more frictionless way just like the web browser did
Code Zen 