Mobile experience sampling : Reaching the parts of Facebook other methods cannot reach

Abstract

Location-aware Social Network Sites (SNS) are now widely used by mobile phone users, enabling users to share their location in real time to their social network. Such location-sharing may introduce privacy concerns depending on the user, the location being shared, and the people to whom they are shared. The study of such privacy concerns is difficult, as a user filling out a questionnaire may forget the exact reasons for sharing. We have explored the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) for in situ capture of users’ experiences. This paper describes our mobile phone ESM testbed and presents preliminary results obtained from a 2-week experiment with 40 students sharing their location in real time on Facebook, a popular SNS.