Facebook has added the smartphone-enabled-barcode-scanner friendly QR code system to its user profiles offering the ability to generate status updates as QR codes or to allow users to simply “View QR Barcode.”

There's nothing like a nice QR code

This is something that people in both our Twitter and Facebook feeds have been reporting since around noon, with the options to “View QR Barcode” and “Generate status QR barcode” appearing below some users’ profile pictures on their main page. At the moment it seems that the QR code option has been appearing and disappearing from Facebook (at the moment we can’t see it ourselves, but was there about twenty minutes ago).

If nothing else, it’s curious to see Facebook moving towards QR codes. While the codes are interesting in terms of offering status updates, it is perhaps a little more interesting to consider a QR code for a Facebook profile as something people might simply carry with them… of course, it is a little bit of a roundabout way of going about things, when you take it all into consideration.

Given the fact that Facebook offers “vanity” URLs, the fact is that using a QR code to get to someone’s profile might very well take longer than actually just saying, “Oh, you can check it out at Facebook dot com forward slash John Smith.” Still, never let it be said that we’d stand in the way of progress for progress’s sake.

That said, even as someone who very much likes QR codes, this seems a strange use for them to be put to.