With Stickybits, Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein...

7:37 am - Tue, Mar 9, 2010: 6 notes

With Stickybits, Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein are matching the social phenomenon of location based services with the unique identification of barcodes. Built on the RedLaser and SimpleGeo service stack, Stickybits offers exactly what you’d expect from a social mobile app, as per the TechCrunch review:

Each barcode is programmable by the first person who scans it and and leaves a photo, video, audio, or text message. The next time somebody scans that barcode, the previous message will appear on their phone. Anyone can add a new message to the same code, resulting in a stream of messages connected to whatever object or place the barcode is stuck on. Each scan, and related message, is geo-tagged so you can see as an object moves around how its story evolves.

The app lets you follow people and see their object stream, or get notified whenever one of your objects is scanned, moved, or new bits are attached to them. You can toggle between stream and map views. It supports Facebook Connect for login and any scan can be broadcast out to Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare. With Foursquare, it actually gives you the option to check into the place where you are by scanning the barcode.

I like the idea of making augmented reality applications simple and readily accessible to everyone. This is more practical than the myriad of AR business card video use cases to be found on YouTube, transforming abject nerd porn into something useful. This isn’t the first barcode/QR code generator/reader (if only the iPhone or Android had RFID readers built in too), but it may be the best so far in terms of frictionless social connectivity. My only question is whether Stickybits is angling to be an ultimate destination for consumption and generation of ID code based content or simply settle for being a breadcrumb in the expansive accretive datastream: SMS/iPhone SDK => Twitter/Facebook => Stickybits (RedLaser => SimpleGeo) => FourSquare => The actual application I use for all this stuff. We’re seeing a whole lot of great service application layers but not enough experience layers. Who is going to lay claim to owning the experience, and thus lifeline to the customer, around all these great services?