What are Annotations?

And why should you care? Well, annotations are a brand-spanking-new way to add context to stories in a user-friendly way, augmenting the reading experience.

Annotations, how do they work?

Right now, if you visit the super-top-secret annotation activation page, you'll be able to highlight story text on any page and submit a note, comment, or annotation. You can do this on your own stories, or someone else's.

Then what?

When your story has received an annotation, you'll see it pending on your dashboard at app.hackernoon.com. You, the author, have the power to accept or reject these annotations — if you reject them, they go away, but if you accept them, they show up on your story as a little yellow highlight, under the selected text.

When you hover over this highlighted text, you'll see the annotation! Easy as pie.

Why should I use this?

You can use annotations to:

• Define acronyms and jargon
• Provide context
• Make jokes
• Explain complex concepts
• Provide a backstory
• Define difficult words
• Help people better understand technical terms
• Provide footnotes

Where do we go from here?

As we continue to build on, iterate, and improve Hacker Noon, our goal is to be more transparent (check out Dane's recent product update recap). We hope you'll continue to follow us on this journey, and see where it goes.

Happy hacking, y'all!