Scan.Me Makes An Exit – Thanks To Snapchat
Snapchat, the little startup that had gone viral and turned down Facebook’s 3 billion dollar offer has just made a few acquisitions of its own, and among them is a company that goes by the name of Scan.Me.
Apparently Snapchat acquired this QR scanning startup that makes good use of iBeacon technology for $14 million in cash, $3 million in restricted stock units, and $33 million in Class B common Snapchat stock, according to TechCrunch. It also acquired Vergence Labs, makers of an eyeglass video camera, for $11 million in cash and $4 million in stock.
The question is, what does Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel have planned for the company and where does Scan.Me fit in.
Creating Codes Made Easy
The company makes it easy for to create bar codes, QR codes, NFC tags, thus helping businesses make their own real world „Buy Now“ or „Check In“ buttons that can be placed place on a product or a shop window.
The whole system is incredibly user friendly, as all a user needs is a device with a built in camera- any device nowadays, basically. There’s even absolutely no need to take a photo or press a button- Scan.Me app recognizes codes automatically.
It also allows users to track their codes and campaigns with real-time analytics by scan count, time period, geographic location, and more to gain valuable insight connect with their audience across a growing number of social networks. The Scan app itself was (and still is) available for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, and Windows devices.
Apparently, 7 engineers from Utah will be moving to Snapchat int he following weeks.
Snapchat has recently launched Snapcash, a peer-to-peer payments option, and there was talk of Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo meeting with Spiegel last January to discuss some discuss some „big ideas about working with Snapchat”. Twitter is also letting Snapchat have some of their engineering, who will, together with the ones from Scan.Me, make quite a contribution to the development team lead by Snapchat’s CTO Bobby Murphy.
What all those „big ideas“ are about and how they relate to the acquisition of Scan.Me remains to be seen, but it is clear that Snapchat has great expectations and aspirations.
