Oh, it reminds me Stickybits (before they pivoted to become Turntable.fm), but I think their app wasn't well-timed. I was a fan ! I hope Gum becomes successful.
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@marwannas oh yeah! I forgot about that!
I'm not sure if this has been written about already but I'm curious to hear why Stickybits didn't work, @billychasen, @seth, and/or @schlaf.
@marwannas First thing that came to my mind was Stickybits. I just couldn't remember the name and literally started going through my desk drawers to find those stickers!
@marwannas This was basically what we were doing with stickybits. The hard part about it was there wasn't much content that really made people want to scan a product barcode.
We started with sticker packs of barcodes so you could attach a digital message to things like a birthday card. That was the highest quality experience, but still not frequent enough to keep it going.
Brands loved the idea of attaching content to their barcodes, so we began working with them on promotions and contests to add interesting things to their products. But while brands loved this, people were really just interested in getting the prize.
I still think it's a very powerful idea and love seeing it again. Best of luck!
We've seen several apps for location-based messages but tying social interactions to social interactions to things is unique. I'm not sure how I would use this but I like weird apps. 😉
@rrhoover A few ideas on-the-spot : tie bonus content to your products without the need for a QR code (such as sexy pics on your Axe/Lynx deodorant), allow people to share their feelings and rate a specific product (like "Don't buy this" attached to the barcode), declare your love to this cute girl in the library, on the book she wants to borrow, attach your CV to the gift you're going to send to potential employers, etc.
@rrhoover This almost reminds me of the Drop for iPhone app: http://bit.ly/1zVGupx. Though I agree, the interactions tied to particular objects is an interesting new twist.
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@rrhoover Yeah, the novelty of it alone got me to download. I'm looking forward to playing around with it. Great website, too. Love how it feels.
@rrhoover I think maybe @billychasen has the right idea, focusing on a small group of enthusiasts, Whisky drinkers or wine aficionados maybe, trying to get a few of them to use it, see what features might stick.
We'll be updating in a few weeks so will keep you posted, and thanks again for all the feedback.
Cheers
Steve
@rrhoover For background I founded community app Consumr, a barcode scanner, so I'm thrilled to see people like @billychasen and @jasoncrawford chiming in given their contributions to the space. Tying social interactions to things is unique, but unique also can mean a novelty that wears off. Getting repeat usage with barcode scanning is hard. I think the social fun of posting any content to a barcode is great but still felt like it wasn't truly helping users. Stickybits and BarcodeHero built some really neat social stuff in this space that clearly inspired Gum.
The key is to create real utility. When someone scans a barcode they want price comparison, reviews, and ways to buy the product. The social component comes in the form of the feedback you provide. It helps establish a sensible give and take to the user whereby they scan in store to find out how something is rated and they scan at home to share their feedback. It wasn't easy to get that going although now we're into the millions of ratings from mobile users.
I would love to see the resurrection of the barcode hidden social note. Good luck!
I wonder if something like estimote stickers would work better for UX. Literally just walking past something and getting a push notification could be much more lightweight, although potentially expensive.
Cool concept but not sure where or how it will develop. Almost seems like you'll need to figure out a way to tie the consumer to the bar code prior to the consumer actually building the relationship via the barcode, i.e. some form of discovery. Good luck.
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