People dynamically structure social interactions and activities at
various locations in their environments in specialized types of places
such as the office, home, coffee shop, museum and school. They also
imbue various locations with personal meaning, creating group
`hangouts' and personally meaningful `places'. Mobile location-aware
community systems can potentially utilize the existence of such
`places' to support the management of social information and
interaction. However, acting effectively on this potential requires an
understanding of how: (1) places and place-types relate to people's
desire for place-related awareness of and communication with others;
and (2) what information people are willing to provide about themselves
to enable place-related communication and awareness. We present here
the findings from two qualitative studies, a survey of 509 individuals
in New York, and a study of how mobility traces can be used to find
people's important places in an exploration of these questions. These
studies highlight how people value and are willing to routinely provide
information such as ratings, comments, event records relevant to a
place, and when appropriate their location to enable services. They
also suggest how place and place-type data could be used in conjunction
with other information regarding people and places so that systems can
be deployed that respect users' People-to-People-to-Places
data sharing preferences. We conclude with a discussion on how `place'
data can best be utilized to enable services when the systems in
question are supported by a sophisticated computerized user-community
social-geographical model.