Footnotes, comments, bookmarks, and marginalia on the Web
Annotating is the act of creating associations between distinct pieces of information. Annotation is a ubiquitous activity online in many guises: comments on articles, footnotes, sticky notes, “hot spots” on images, timestamped notes on video or audio tracks, highlighted text passages in ebook readers, evocative pictures attached to song lyrics, quotes and links on social media, geotagged pinpoints on maps, and even tagged bookmarks, are all forms of annotation. One of the most common and engaging web activities for the average person is discussion of a document or piece of media.
Many projects and companies are now turning to annotations to solve a variety of issues with communication on the web.
W3C recognizes the value and potential in annotations of various types, and is holding a workshop to determine what the web ecosystem needs to fully realize the potential of annotations.
