People Can Be Scannable (if they want to be, for now…)

A Netherlands based company called W-41 has come up with a digital logo that will allow people to scan one another with a camera phone, and it will then direct them to the scanee’s Facebook page.

People who are interested enough can go to the company’s website and download the free application to your phone that enables this scanning to happen. And people who are even more interested can purchase W-41 clothing, like a shirt, with a unique 2D barcode attached.

A barcode, when holding a cellphone’s camera up to it, will makes a red cross appear on phones with the application installed. This red cross tells you that after taking the picture, you will be directed to the website that the person chose, most likely Facebook or MySpace (but hey, I’m guessing you might see some pretty freaky stuff every now and again depending where you find people that have this barcode).

After thinking about it, I’ve come up with two possible purposes for wearing one of these barcodes. One is that it allows other people to find out more about you without actually talking to you. People will see the barcode and check out your Facebook or MySpace page, then decide if they want to have a face-to-face or not. This is probably not going to be the most likely reason. The other is simply a tool to talk to people or for people to talk to you. An example conversation could go something like:

“Hey, you got one of those barcodes. I’m going to check out your site.”
“Oh, cool. I’ve got some original art I scanned onto my page, you can tell me what you think.”
“It already loaded. I see you like to draw, that’s awesome. I’m an artist, too.”
“Yeah, I can tell because of your unique taste in clothing that no one would be able to appreciate unless they were an artist.”
“My best friend picked out this outfit. She hates art.”

I’m interested to see how well this sells.