Breaking news! Facebook could be introducing QR codes to profile pages soon. These codes, for those of you who don't know, are a bit like the barcodes you find on products you might buy in your local shop, but are capable of holding more complex information such as a website address or a short message. Interestingly the functionality seems to have disappeared now, but after seeing this tweet (which pointed to some more information available at: http://www.technicavita.org/social-tech/mobile-sites/introduction-to-mobile-barcode-qr-technology.html):
I immediately went to my profile page in Facebook and saw these two new links:
When I clicked on "Generate Status QR code" I got the dialogue box below:
However when I clicked "Generate Barcode" there was nothing where the QR code should be so it looks like this functionality does not work yet. When I tried it a little later I got an error message and then after that the links disappeared.
This is a really interesting development as Facebook is a hugely popular service and if it supported QR codes this could drive mass consumer acceptance of this technology (purely from the point of view of increasing awareness). With QR code readers available for a great many phones this could be a perfect combination.
Re: Are QR codes coming to Facebook?
I'm currently dealing with QR codes with a project I've been working on and there's definitely a mental barrier to understanding, even among tech-y types. I'm *very* curious how people on facebook will react to this if/when it goes live. I can't help but think of the snafu that happened a while back on ReadWriteWeb when hundreds of facebook users landed there cause they searched google for "Facebook login" got confused and tried to log into ReadWriteWeb using Facebook Connect thinking it was facebook. The comments were damn funny, but makes you wonder if these same people are ready for two dimensional barcodes and physical hyperlinking.