Stickybits Adds Social Media Dimension To Bar Codes

Think Post-It Notes gone viral-digital. Barcode stickers that hold messages in text, video, audio, or photo – triggered when scanned. A sci-fi log line? Nope. Stickybits is a mobile app for Android and iPhones that tracks virtual messages among peers, friends, and customers – all brought together by a common bar code.

A sort of digital tag, a barcode is programmed by the first user’s scan. The next person to scan that barcode receives the embedded message on their phone, and can add a new message – creating a stream connected to a place or an object where the barcode is located.

Using SimpleGeo's technology, Stickybits geolocates the barcodes to show where they are scanned and then follows the object and the evolving storyline. A user can switch between map views and streams and trail other people’s object streams. The app lets you know when new bits are added. The actual app is free, but 20 vinyl barcode stickers cost $10.

Potential uses? A coded business card linked to a resume or social media profile; guided tours and maps for theme parks and museums; small business merchants tracking local deliveries and offering digital coupons; inventorying pharmaceutical products in a box.

The two digerati behind Stickybits are Billy Chasen, originator of Chartbeat, and Seth Goldstein Chairman and Founder, SocialMedia. It began over lunch and a conversation about embedding digital content onto physical objects. A hundred days later, they’d raised $100,000, moved from the lunch conversation concept to the initial launch, and created their own marketing mantra: “Tag your world."

Brand marketing opportunities via location-based services, enabled by the smart phone, are exponential. Tagging physical products with digital data has infinite possibilities for both B2B and C2C. Some of Goldstein’s projections include: physicians sharing medical data and records; appliances with barcodes that trigger owner’s manuals; custom designers can affix stickers to a product and show videos about the manufacture of the item; greeting cards with a sender’s personalized video message embedded.

Goldstein sums up the Stickybits brand thus: “Just because something is made from atoms, not bits, does not mean that it is not dynamic. We have just never had a way to connect objects to each other or to people. This is an attempt to make visible all kinds of social dynamics around objects that otherwise have been invisible.”