Munzee Makes Scavenger Hunts with QR Codes Fun and Easy

Location-based services gained ground because of the gamification elements wherein the platform becomes a game for users. A prime example is foursquare that awards users with points, badges and mayorships for their checking. However, foursquare proved to be easy to game as many users cheated by checking into a place that they did not visit in the first place.

Munzee is another location-aware service that makes it more fun and more flexible. The service bills itself as a scavenger hunt that allows people to find real world items. These items have the Munzee tags, which is a QR code. Finders would need to scan these QR codes to capture the item with their mobile devices or smartphones and earn points.

It would be more difficult to cheat with Munzee because it would take into account your GPS locations along with the scan. Munzee QR codes are now hidden or displayed in close to 160,000 locations as of August 15, 2012, and close to 1 million scans have been recorded.

If you want to play, you can download the Munzee mobile app and check out if there are tags close to you. You can find the Munzees by looking at a map or a list that shows you where the closest tags are. Just scan the QR code and get points. The person who deployed the tag will also get points for your scan.

So how will this be deployed? Munzee recently had an event that proved that there is a lot of potential that this would hit it big for real. They recently had thousands of scouts use the app for five days at the Michigan State University. The app allowed more than 77,000 participants to interact with each other. They offered mobile devices and gadgets to the top three players. There were more than 150 individual events that participants could join in and they had a tremendous amount of scans, even reaching 22 scans per minute on the second day of the event. In the end, Munzee was able to help the Boy Scouts of America bring their members closer and have them interact with one another more, while also making them more competitive. It also encouraged event attendance.

Do you think that a QR code scavenger hunt could work for a business? Tell us how in the comments!