Microsites and URL shorteners made websites easier to type in manually.

By the time they became common in the United States, people were starting to own smartphones that made the codes seem archaic.

Without modern apps or full keyboards, QR codes were convenient, automatic ways to open URLs, add a contact to your address book, or send a pre-defined message.īut in the West, QR codes were slow to catch on. They caught on in Japan around 2002 in the pre-smartphone era when camera phones began to come with the ability to read the codes. QR codes were originally invented by Denso Wave in 1994 to track cars being built on Japanese assembly lines. The more people who follow each other, the more content that’s accessible to them in Snapchat, the longer they’ll use it, and the more opportunities the startup has to earn money. Snapchat’s app doesn’t have a way for you to discover people to follow, but the downloadable Snapcodes could help interconnect its legions of users. So to make it easier for celebrities, Snapchat Stories stars, and everyday users to get more followers on the app, Snapchat today begins allowing users to download vector versions of their Snapcode that they can put on websites, posters, big screens and more. Now Snapchat tells me millions of Snapcodes are scanned each week. If another user scans someone’s Snapcode by focusing their Snapchat app’s camera on it, they automatically follow that person.

Each user now has their Snapchat-branded QR code on their profile that can be opened by pressing the yellow ghost icon atop the camera. Snapchat launched a feature called Snapcodes (also known as Snaptags). It became a joke worthy of HBO’s Silicon Valley: “Only Snapchat could make QR codes cool.” But it’s even funnier now because it has actually come true. Try scanning my Snapcode to demo the feature )

Gays snapchat