Facebook Quietly Rolls Out QR Codes on Profiles

QR codes are all the rage in Japan, a country pretty much obsessed with mobile devices, having been so way before the iPhone came along and opened the eyes of everyone else to what a powerful mobile device could do. Incidentally, the iPhone hasn't really taken off in Japan like in the rest of the world. But QR codes are about to get a massive push into the mainstream worldwide and exposure to 400 million or so people courtesy of a brand-new feature on Facebook, which enables users to generate QR codes for their profiles or statuses.

Not everyone is seeing the new feature and Facebook hasn't made any official announcements yet, but it certainly looks like it's rolling out for a decent number of people. Those who did get the new feature will get a couple of new links under their profile picture along with the ones to the user’s photos or videos.

Labeled "View QR barcode" and "Get status QR barcode," the two links are pretty self-explanatory. The first one will generate a QR barcode for the user's profile enabling others to quickly navigate to the profile on their mobile devices just by 'scanning' it. The other one is a bit odd. The name says it all, but there's relatively little use for the feature for regular individuals. For brands and companies operating a Facebook Page, that's another matter. QR codes could be embedded on real-world posters, TV commercials and various other places leading users back to the brand's Facebook Page.

QR stands for "quick response" and is a form of barcode used mostly to 'transfer' information to a mobile device. The barcodes’ design enables them to store quite a bit of data and also makes it easy for mobile phones to read them using built-in cameras. The images can then be interpreted by QR decoder apps, available for many mobile platforms and virtually all smartphones. In these types of applications, the codes themselves hold a URL, but they can be used to store many other data types. Google has also been pushing the format in the US.