Layar, the startup which is one of the few to really power ahead with Augmented Reality applications, recently revealed it’s well-thought out business model after a long period of scaling the app’s usage. Their Creator tool allows offline print publishers to upload advertising imagery so that any Layar user can pass their smartphone over the ad content and see an augmented reality enhanced advert. So, goodbye QR codes, ugly visual signals or watermarks or the requirement to log a location. The publishers pay, and Layar is in the middle of the transaction. It just works. Google’s Project Glass is some way away, so Layar is in a sweet spot for this kind of application. I think it will be big.
So what happens with Layar’s original AR business? Well it looks like they are going for a much more social idea. Today they are releasing a new app with Layar technology inside it. Stiktu is a free mobile application that allows users to “remix the real world”. You can download the iOS app here and the Android app here. This is designed to be the social / user-generated equivalent of Layar, allowing users to add their own drawings, text, images and stickers to magazines, posters and more by simply scanning them with a smartphone. Think of it as AR graffiti.
Thus anyone can scan the image in the real world and see what someone has done to it.
Users can connect by discovering, liking, sharing and commenting on interesting posts.
Raimo van der Klein, Layar cofounder, says “Stiktu opens tremendous new possibilities to interact with the physical world around us. At Layar, we want to democratise space.”
It reminds me of what RjDj has done with sounds in the real world which can be uploaded and remixed. Now Stiktu plans to do it with AR but in a location sense. I think it’s going to be very interesting to see where this app goes.
Check it out in the video below:
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Layar was founded in 2009 and attracted $15.6 million funding in total to date.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMsk9E_8FeY]
