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Why is is so cool to hate on QR codes lately? I've heard Merlin Mann and Marco Arment rag on them pretty often on their podcasts. I don't get it. No matter how ugly, it's still a better way for me to get to your website/app from a physical item (bottle of wine, print ad, whatever) than having me type out a URL....sure they are stuck a bunch of places that make them ugly or inconvenient to actually read....but so are URLs and phone numbers. I'm way more likely to scan a code than open a browser and type out a URL or even worse make a note/take a picture to remember to look something up later, there's pretty much no chance at all that I will call a phone number if that's all that is listed. The code (when implemented properly) takes me directly to what I want with almost zero effort on my part.

But I may be some kind of weirdo, I think think QR codes are kinda cool looking anyway, at least more so than (800)-999-9999 or http://www.foo.bar



Karma-whoring, pure and simple. You can always get upvotes (facebook likes, pageviews) for being cantankerous.


Yeah, pretty funny how that comic was ragging on QR codes and marketers, yet the whole page was half covered by advertisements.


I don't understand all of the hate either.

ComScore releases a lot of stats about QR code usage and people actually do use them quite a bit. I find them useful, especially when the alternative is typing in a URL that's 100 characters long.


There are ads encouraging you to type 100 character urls?


Once something becomes ubiquitous, the complaints about it being overused or misused become similarly common - and as someone has already pointed out you can always get upvotes/likes/what-ever if people agree or just if you moan in an amusing manner.




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