In 1994 DENSO, a division of Toyota, created a 2 dimensional scanner code to replace the single plane barcode. Over the last 16 years a lot has happened but the biggest effect on the proliferation of this code is the number of hand held scanner units in daily use across America. This refers to, of course, your smart phone.
Having bee in use for decades the standard U.P.C. (bar code) symbol encodes 14 numeric digits. Obviously in an era when all inventory is digitized for fast scanning and control this is a very limiting number especially as we switch to a more global system of tracking. The challenge was to come up with a quickly recognizable image which could hold many times more information and still fit on a small inventory sticker.
Developers at DENSO introduced the QR Code (a registered trademark of DENSO-WAVE Corporation) and it has been seen on shipping labels, packaging labels, parts, inventory items, and more for a decade and a half. It was the advent of scanning applications like ScanLife and Google Goggles which rapidly accelerated their use into a new world of opportunity.
The QR Code holds a much higher amount of information. In fact it can hold up to 4,296 characters of alpha-numeric data. That's a good page of information!
Over a year ago I created a QR code to be used as my Facebook and Twitter image which lead to a social landing page. I tracked the number of hits to that landing page and in one month it totaled only 22 hits. About a month ago I tried it again but I only sent a code to TwitPic which means it played in the Twitter stream and in a single day had over 65 hits to the new landing page. That's how rapidly this is moving.
If you have a smart phone (Android, Treo, Blackberry, iPhone, other) download a QR Code reader and use it to scan (take a photo of) the image above. (In the event you don't have a smart phone or just want to skip that step for now go to QRCodeBase.com for more information.)
What is the benefit?
The benefit is with a simple, free application on a smart phone the user can access your very long web url without typing it in - they simply point and let the application do the work for them
A good friend recently commented, this week in fact, he thought all the attention to be premature. Possibly, but I'm on it! My new business cards have a QR code, my brochures have them, I'm getting a big one printed on my banner to be used at trade shows, and more.
Why?
Very simple: dynamic content delivery. Let's say I create a flier for an agent with a listing at 123 Main Street using the listing price of $429,900 and an interest rate of 4.25% and an APR of 4.313% but the price drops and the interest rate goes up. The fliers I created stay the same but the landing page containing all the information from the flier does not - it can change daily. On the flier I put a little 2" square image with a short explanation of how to use it and any reader with a smart phone or computer connection can now scan that code and be delivered with a dynamic, interactive web page.
Post cards, thank you notes, invitations, lost and found ... how many uses can you think of?
Three opportunities in the next few days to get int the conversation:
Tuesday at Noon Eastern on Social Media Edge Radio
Tuesday evening at 9PM Eastern on Tuesday Thunder (live chat)
Thursday at Noon Easter on REtechRadio
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