Visualization Annotation at Internet Scale

Visualization annotation allows users to communicate within a visualization as opposed to outside it. While effective in research settings, the technique has not found a home on today's social data analysis sites. Scaling the technique to an Internet-sized audience represents the most significant obstacle to its widespread adoption. This paper discusses the problem and proposes four interaction techniques to help visualization annotation scale for a Web audience. The designs strive for clarity of the underlying visualization while providing integrated and rapid feedback about annotations.