(2017-07-19) Comeback Of The Dreaded Qr Code

The Curious Comeback of the Dreaded QR Code

end up on some corporate website that's not even optimized for your phone. Few people ever scanned a code; fewer did twice

The second wave of QR codes started around 2014, when Evan Spiegel went to China. The young Snapchat CEO had long been fascinated with WeChat, the messaging app that dominates the online lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese users.

If you're trying to encode anything longer than a simpler URL, your QR code becomes physically too large to put anywhere or too complicated to scan reliably

He called the team at Scan, a Utah-based company behind one of the App Store's most popular QR readers. Snap acquired the company

So in addition to bringing QR scanning to the camera that opens every time you tap on Snapchat, the Scan team set out to build a new kind of code.

When Snap launched Snapcodes in 2015, offering an easy way to add someone as a friend on Snapchat—just scan their code!—users blanketed the internet with theirs.

When you scan a Snapcode you're going to get a lens that you normally wouldn't get," Ouimet says. "The lenses are like the ultimate candy to unlock." Scan the code on the jumbotron at the football game, get the lens for that specific game.

Since Snapchat controls the codes and always warns you what you're opening, scanning one doesn't feel like clipping a wire hoping the bomb doesn't explode; it's more like opening a treasure chest. (Walled Garden)

What will people do with all those codes in the future? Ouimet won't say, but WeChat and China offer some intriguing ideas. You could walk into a restaurant, scan the code on your chair, and then order and pay for a meal on your phone that's brought directly to your seat. Rather than just using a code to get into the movie theater, you could scan a poster to buy the tickets. A bike-sharing service can use QR codes to let members check out bikes just by scanning a code on its frame.

Google Allo Messaging app added QR code support when the team realized they needed an easier way for people to join group chats, and the app will use similar codes to log you into the Allo desktop app.

bake code-reading capabilities in Snap's new Spectacles

There are certainly challenges even now. QR code scams are hard to spot—someone just pastes a code over another one, and redirects their traffic—and physical items are hard to update or replace. As companies develop their own codes, you'll still have to switch between apps for each scan