What is Mobile Visual Search? In short, it’s what your Google’s Goggles does. But, we’ll talk about it more later. First, let take a crack at explaining why Quick Response (QR) codes are so miserable.

It’s funny that people actually thought QR codes were a reasonable way for people to consume information.

QR Codes are a “middle technology”: functional enough for marketers to play around with (and chirp about how they’re being innovative) but not advanced enough for it to be anything but a nuisance.

People don’t like interacting with advertising in the first place, so what made marketers think that using a clumsy technology to facilite that interaction would fair well?

comScore, a digital research firm, did a study and found that 14 million mobile users in the U.S. scaned a QR code. Impressed? I am not. That’s less than 5% of the U.S. population.

Not worth the effort

I can see why advertisers liked the idea – it was a gimmicky tactic to draw people in and at first it worked. But then people started to catch on and realized there’s nothing more anticlimactic than the lackluster experience of scanning a QR code. Is it ever worth the effort?

You have to rifle through all your apps to find your scanner. Then it’s nearly impossible to capture the code perfectly in one take. Sometimes the links are dead or glitchy. I am getting frustrated just recounted the last time I messed with a QR code.

Why couldn’t they have simply given me a keyword to Google search, or a simple URL…? Wouldn’t it be great if I could just scan the entire page or that DVD cover or that 80 story building in front of me or that wine bottle – and then have the information I wanted pop onto my screen within seconds?

No worries, the introduction of mobile visual search (MVS) just put QR codes to bed.

From a two to three letter revolution (QR –> MVS)

Jon Barocas, CEO of bieMEDIA, a Denver-based online marketing strategy company, prophesied the death of the QR Code:

“The issue is that these ‘squares’ take up valuable real estate on a business’ marketing collateral or even act as an eye sore to the storefront. With our investment in Mobile Acuity, we’re able to get straight to the point – just point at the product, shoot a picture and you’ll receive all the information you’re looking for and even be able to buy the product on the spot.” –Jon Barocas

Barocas is talking about mobile visual search (MVS) and its ability to act as the more powerful and more useful QR code. The only difference is that you no longer need the QR code.

MVS allows you to snap a photo with your smartphone’s camera and within seconds the MVS application will grab info on the product, landmark, or book (the list keeps on growing). If it’s a product you’ve scanned, you’ll be given the option to read up about it or purchase it on the spot. This can already be done to some extent with Google’s Goggles, but the technologies are advancing rapidly:

QR codes are limited in that they lack three-dimensional recognition capabilities. This lends itself to more opportunities for consumers to experience instant gratification in viewing videos, coupons, and mobile links, when consuming more traditional medias like newspapers and magazines.

Herbert Bay, a Swiss entrepreneur and co-founder of Kooaba has been developing an image-recongition app Shortcut. Shortcut allows users to snap pictures of newspaper peices, magazine articles, billboards and more. Once the user has snapped the photo they’re taken to a more dynamic and intercative digital version of the content on their phone. From there they can comment, share or access different features. USA Today and the New York Post are a just a few of the companies leveraging the apps.

 Let the consumers consume

In less than one year time, QR codes will only be used only ironically by hipsters promoting their basement ukulele dub-step house parties. That’s because the only people who find tactless technologies of use are those with an odd sense of humor. MVS possess what QR codes lacked in usability and speed. They do for consumers what all great technologies have done for consumers, they don’t get in the way. They let the consumers consume.

Before you know it we’ll all be wearing a pair of what Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku describes as Internet-ready contact lenses. They’re already used by the military, on monkeys in laboratories and have been shown to enable normal activity for patients in vegetative states. At the moment they are too costly to reach a consumer market, but as the government continues to develop them out of a necessity to one-up their enemies they will indeed hit the shelves of your local Best Buy.

When this takes place the lenses will be used by everyday people and behold augmented reality will be simply reality. When you interact with people/artifacts/buildings/anything really, the lenses will pull up all the data available – for example if you walk past a stranger, the lenses will gather that person’s name, age, occupation, photos, interests, etc (think of a more dynamic Facebook page, but 3D and you can sift through the information with your eye movements).