Starting late in the day on Thursday Apple began to feature a new community application called Barcode Hero. I’ve been using the application for just about a week now and overall I am impressed.

What is Barcode Hero? Well, here’s how they describe their app:

“Barcode Hero is a fun and practical barcode scanner to use with friends. Scan to compare prices, follow other shoppers to see recommendations, and share your own tips to help others discover the stuff you love.”

The concept focusses around products instead of location, but rewards are similar to location based applications like Foursquare and Gowalla. Scan a few products and you could become the “King of iPhone” or “Duke of Cleaning Supplies” (two titles I currently hold).

Focussing on products allows Barcode Hero to provide real-time value to almost any shopper (something location-based applications usually do not), regardless of the number of friends they are following. Scanning a product gives you a list of prices from various online retailer (powered by PriceGrabber.com) so you can make sure you aren’t getting ripped off at your local retailer.

The real power of the application will come as the number of users increase and shoppers are able to see not just price, but comments/reviews from friends and other Barcode Hero participants. Currently when you scan a product you can see if any of your friends own the product, any comments they have written, and you get a list of other products your friends of purchased in related categories. Good stuff, but you need critical mass for it to be really useful.

The other nice feature the application offers is the “Gift Ideas” page. The page is similar to Amazon’s recommendation page (not surprising given the two founders, Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford, both spent time at Amazon) and shows items you may be interested in based on your past purchases.

Other features include:
- Ability to follow other shoppers to see their scans & recommendations
- Building a wishlist to share with friends & family
- Inviting friends to see your scans & recommendations
- Sharing products you find via email, text, or Facebook

Two features I would like to see are 1) The ability to search your Facebook and Twitter friends to see if any of them are using the application and 2) the ability to share on Twitter.

Next up, privacy, a topic that always surfaces when you are talking about community based applications. As I mentioned, Barcode Hero focusses on products versus location and that minimizes some concerns (no one can figure out you are 200 miles from home and break into your house) but inceases others (people can find out just purchased a $3,000 LED television). In the end it is really up to you to decide if the value you get from the application is worth the amount of data you share.

The folks at Barcode Hero do provide options to help protect your privacy and they are proactive in addressing the issue. Their webpage has a “Facebook No-Spam Pledge”, there is a section in the FAQ focussed on privacy and they have an explicit privacy policy. The application also provides a “Protect My Activity” option that only allows people you have approved to follow you and keeps you activity out of the public stream.

I must say that after a week of using the app I have become a little addicted to scanning products and watching the leaderboard. The user experience is clean and simple which makes it easy and fun to use and the product data and recommendations will only get better over time.

My two cents, try it out, I bet you like….and you can’t beat the price…it’s free!

For more information check out www.barcodhero.com or just download the app in iTunes.