A Multifaceted Approach to Exploring Mobile Annotations

Mobile phones with capabilities such as media capture and location detection have become popular among consumers, and this has made possible the development of location-based mobile annotation sharing applications. The present research investigates the creation of mobile annotations from three perspectives: the recipients of the annotations, the type of content created, and the goals behind creating these annotations. Participants maintained a two week-long diary, documenting their annotation activities. Results suggest that range of motivational factors, including those for relationship maintenance and entertainment. Participants were also more inclined to create leisure-related annotations, while the types of recipients were varied. Implications of our work are also discussed.