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Barcodes: Really clever or really dumb?
“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
David St. Hubbins, This is Spinal Tap
Google is apparently experimenting with tiny barcodes that will sit next to newspaper advertisements and be scannable by mobile phone, so that you can “read” the code and be whisked to some website where you can get an interactive coupon, a special deal on Star Wars memorabilia, etc. Apparently I’m not the only one who immediately had visions of the CueCat, an ungainly handheld scanner gizmo that some ridiculous company tried to foist on newspaper readers back in the first bubble.
In the comments on a Silicon Alley Insider post about the Google experiment, Henry Blodget says that CueCat was the single worst idea he ever heard during Bubble 1.0 — and that’s saying a lot. I would have to agree (Allen Stern of Centernetworks, however, says that he thought it was a pretty good idea, and still has one in his closet). If you want some technical information, there’s some at the Google FAQ.
I know that there are a lot of people who are going to point out that they use barcodes like this all the time to buy things in Japan, but I would like to point out that not everything that is popular in Japan is good, and in support of that I would offer this and most of these.
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advertisers would like it, but what would compel anyone to actually pick one
up and scan anything? Value proposition isn't obvious, IMHO.
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Meanwhile, most people who have web surfing capabilities on their phone are probably more likely to get their news online rather than in print.
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1. The CueCat required the user to have a separate piece of hardware - no such problem exists with software embedded in cell phones.
2. The CueCat required you to go to your desktop and then go to the website. Again, with web browsers on cellphones, the user can immediatelly go to the landing page after scanning the barcode. It's an even better proposition with GPS location; you can snap a picture of a Starbucks ad (with your cell phone's camera), the software decodes the barcode, and uses embedded GPS to show you a path to the nearest store. Note that this is not limited to print ads, the barcode can be anywhere since the user doesn't have to physically scan it, they can simply snap a picture and let software do the rest.
The biggest problem that I see is that people in North America are not accustomed to browsing the web from their phones, mostly because of the exorbitant rates charged by the few available carriers. No such problems exist in Japan and hence the barcode idea can work there. In my opinion Google is putting the cart before the horse here.
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Here’s just one example of how this would work aside from the Starbucks situation above. Sunday afternoon, you stop at a house for sale. Doors are locked, but there is a sign with leaflets. Pull out phone,snap a pic of the barcode that might be on a flier. No you can access video walkthrough of the house. Perhaps a flickr slide show? Web address with all the features of house.
How about car lot? You know how many people go looking at cars in middle of night?
Other example would be scanning a doctor’s name at a big facility to get turn-by-turn directions to get to their respective office..
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Beyond my personal reminiscing, the real point is don't confuse the potential of a technology with the potential of any specific implementation. A number of other comments have given examples that seem on their face to be more compelling than what Google is doing, but this is a common enough point of confusion that I thought it deserved to be called out specifically. None of this is to say that 2D bar codes definitely will be successful -- only that Google's place on one side of the Spinal Tap quote above does not prevent someone else from being on the other side. :-)
BTW, I was originally a skeptic of 2D barcodes myself, but turned to be more of an optimist on the technology about a year ago (see here for why: http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmullinax/archive/2007... ).
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