Understanding User Behavior of Asking Location-Based Questions on Microblogs

ABSTRACT

With the prevalence of mobile social network services, people can post location-based questions on their social networks to satisfy their needs anytime anywhere. In this article, the authors study location-based questions that people post on microblogs, which is a popular form of social network service. The authors collected posts with geo-tags from Sina Weibo and conducted the study based on about a thousand location-based questions. Their results reveal unique characteristics of location-based questions by analyzing what people ask, how they ask, why they ask, and the context when asking. Location-based questions are closely related to people’s offline activities. Spatial restriction, subjectivity, interactivity, and propagation are the main characteristics that people value for choosing social networks to ask location-based questions. People also apply different phrasing skills to different types of questions. The questions people ask in different contexts also have different focuses. Based on their findings, the authors discuss practical design implications for social networks, location-based Q&A systems, and other applications with location-based features.

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank all the participants for all the time and energy they have contributed to this research.

Funding

This work was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 61332017 and 60703040), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (no. 2010ZX01042-002-003-001), China Knowledge Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology (no. CKCEST-2014-1-5), and the Science and Technology Department of Zhejiang Province (nos. 2011C13042 and 2015C33002).

Notes

¹ http://kin.naver.com/

² http://www.answerbag.com/

³ https://answers.yahoo.com/

⁴ https://www.facebook.com/‎

⁵ https://twitter.com/

⁶ http://weibo.com/

⁷ https://vk.com/

⁸ http://data.weibo.com/report/reportDetail?id=76

⁹ http://www.localmind.com

¹⁰ http://localuncle.com

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 61332017 and 60703040), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (no. 2010ZX01042-002-003-001), China Knowledge Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology (no. CKCEST-2014-1-5), and the Science and Technology Department of Zhejiang Province (nos. 2011C13042 and 2015C33002).

Notes on contributors

Liwen Wang

Liwen Wang is a PhD student in the College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, China. Her research interests include human–computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and location-based services.

Ling Chen

Ling Chen is an Associate Professor in the College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, China, where he received his PhD in Computer Science in 2004. His research interests include ubiquitous computing, location-aware computing, human–computer interaction, and data mining.

Miaomiao Dong

Miaomiao Dong is a PhD student in the College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, China. Her research interests include uncertainty and intelligibility in human–computer interaction.

Ibrar Hussain

Ibrar Hussain is an Assistant Professor at University of Lahore, Pakistan. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Zhejiang University, China, in 2014 and his MSc in Information Management from University of London, Queen Mary, UK, in 2006. His research interests include human–computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and accessibility.

Zhigeng Pan

Zhigeng Pan is a Professor in Hangzhou Normal University, China. His research interests include computer graphics, computing in social science, arts and humanities, and human–computer interaction.

Gencai Chen

Gencai Chen is a Professor in the College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, China. His research interests include location-aware computing, human–computer interaction, database management systems, and data mining.