What Will Happen To Direct Navigation When The World Moves to Scanning Devices?
Posted by Sahar Sarid , Monday, 28 July 2008

Via P8TCH :

    "Think of it as a TinyURL you can wear. Each two-by-four-inch, velcro-backed twill p8tch has a Mysterious Commando Design on the top, and a QRCode on the bottom:

Sample Image

    The QRCode on the p8tch contains a URL. If you scan the code with your iPhone, Mobile Safari will take you directly to that URL. Or, if it’s a Google Maps link, directly to the Google Maps app. Or, if it’s a YouTube link, it’ll show a movie. Cool, right?"

We looked at this concept some two years ago and since we were never strong on mobile technology (just not our thing, yet!), we decided not to pursue. While I don’t believe this will change the nature of direct navigation I do think this is how people will surf the web in the near future (2-5 years). I always believed the more people learn to surf the more they learn to navigate on their own. I heard many times in the past that domain owners lose traffic to Google as many go to Google and type their URL’s there however, traffic leakage goes both ways. Google and previous search engines educated the masses to use keyword search, and much of our traffic is due to that as well.

The above link, now it may not mean much to you today but let’s go back to 1994. If you knew back then domain names are going to be the future of the web, what would you have done? And the question today, if you know scanning will be an integral part of the future web, what will you do?

Some food for thought.

Source: Posted on TheConceptualist by Sahar Sarid -- Reprinted with permission -- July 27, 2008
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