R/GA Creative Director Runs Twitter, RFID Experiment
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, April 16, 2009
Interactive digital agency R/GA's Richard Ting has been experimenting with a cutting-edge technology on Twitter. The platform, dubbed touchatag, allows his 20-month-old daughter to trigger tweets by swiping tags affixed to books and toys near a reader that resembles a bar code scanner.
The platform relies on a form of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology known as near field communications (NFC), as well as QR bar codes that when read by a camera cell phone can launch a browser and connect with a Web page.
Users set up the Twitter application through the Web-based dashboard. Tweets are preset; a fixed message is tied to a physical object. The platform comes with software, one reader and 10 Mifare Ultralight tags from NXP Semiconductors, a Philips Semiconductors spinoff. Each time a reader identifies the tag it sends the signal to the Web platform and triggers the Tweet. The starter kit is available through Alcatel-Lucent or Amazon.com.
Alcatel-Lucent has an investment group and incubator for emerging technologies inside Bell Laboratories that supports fledgling companies. The venture group supports about six ventures. Touchatag is one of two the company has made public.
Ting, VP and executive creative director of mobile and emerging platforms at R/GA, bought the kit with the thought that the tags could make physical objects smart by connecting information about them to the Internet. "The RFID tag allows the object to become smart," Ting said. "This would let you tie in customer service, ratings and recommendations. It also lets me listen in to the talk across the overall community."
Once tags are connected, information transmits from readers to PC software clients and onto the Internet. There are many applications that marketers can use. For example, consumers in a shoe store buying sneakers with an embedded RFID chip could transmit a message to download branded content to their cell phone or tweet a message on Twitter. It could provide marketers with a forum to gather ratings and recommendations and share information.
For Ting, the touchatag turned into a communication experiment to examine cross-generation communication -- how senior citizens might communicate with younger generations. While the older generations would rely on land-line telephones and physical letters, kids would use Twitter and Facebook.
The issues and opportunities with this are obvious.
From a technology standpoint, it's highly valuable for retailers. However, it devalues the communication aspect of Twitter and relegates us back to doing nothing more as businesses than shouting on a street corner and hoping people will listen.
I can't imagine wanting to be connected w/ a business that is tweeting constantly about everything people purchase.
Part of the interest with Twitter is when people make it personal. Additionally, part of the issue with how businesses use Twitter is their lack of interaction. The 'REAL' factor. We have to bring value as businesses to our consumers, empowering them to express themselves.
Slapping a barcode on their foreheads isn't exactly a very personal statement-or empowering.
I have long spoken about the only logical future for trackable advertising to deliver the kind of Minority Report adaptive advertising that we are hell-bent on delivering will be through RFID - and I am talking human implantable microchips to every single person on the planet. Advertising is only one reason for implementing such an Orwellian nightmare.
Apart from the known cancerous effects of RFID (antichips.com), making this wholly irresponsible as a parent on a sensitive young child - it is this careless fool hardy approach to experimentation on tracking without any consideration for human rights, privacy implications and any kind of moral code that is more akin to Mengele then those of us in media.
Everything this little girl does is now open to every pervert, freak and pedophile on the net... and where do you think this will ultimately end up?
Tagging every device and every human being is Hitler's wet dream and reduces life to a mere number with a palatable face disguised as a “sweet tweet”
This technology will be the death of humanity – and I for one will not be part of this suicide.
“Just remember the peg number where you hang your coat up, when you enter the shower.”
NeoMedia technologies has patents that cover this technology.
NeoMedia currently has 30 active patents spanning 13 countries, with 29 additional patents pending. These patents cover various linkage methods including: Barcodes, RFID, Mag Stripe, Voice, and other machine readable and keyed entry identifiers.
http://www.qode.com/en/patents.jsp
Maybe I'm off base but I don't think the specific use of twitter is the central point of this. Privacy issues aside NFC has value to both marketer and consumer in its ability to bridge offline and online worlds.
Beyond just tweeting what you use/buy it has the potential to transmit a message to "virtual shopping assistant" that could text back with reviews, comparable pricing, competitive products, discounts, etc. NFC within a mobile phone could also be used for the actual purchase.
On the marketer/retailer side think of being able to send Incentive offers to customers in store. Or the ability to actually track offline to online (or online to offline) conversion.
No body implants required.