From Travel Plans to Magic Wands: A Cross-Domain Study of Practices and Privacy Requirements for Sharing Emerging Types of Online Content

Online social networks have made sharing photos and other digital content a common activity. Recently, a range of novel online services and connected devices have expanded the set of “things” to share – ranging from new types of digital content like music preferences and workout data to physical things like household items (“sharing economy”). To understand user needs, concerns and preferences in such emerging sharing domains, we collected 200 responses about participants’ experiences with sharing six categories of “things”: music preferences; travel plans; sports activity; real-world items (e.g., rooms and vehicles); virtual items in online games; and dietary preferences. For each category, we systematically describe what our participants share and with whom. Additionally, we asked 56 “non-sharers” to describe their reasons to refrain from sharing personal content from these categories. Using qualitative analysis methods, we use information from both “sharers” and “non-sharers” to identify privacy concerns that frame content sharing, and we discuss how factors like audience perception and sharing controls should inform the design of newly emerging sharing services.