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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Microformats go mainstream

I reported here earlier this month that Technorati was experimenting with microformats, the tags you can add to content like events or contacts so they can be found, collected, and categorized by sites that aggregate such content. Microformats are part of a larger trend called “edge” content that I find exciting. As more people create their own content on their own sites, it makes sense to use this content “on the edge” instead of the old model, which had people submitting their content for publication in a central place. Newspaper classified advertising—and their online equivalents like eBay and Craig’s List—are examples of the latter. Edgeio is an example of the former.

Still, this remains pretty geeky stujff, but perhaps not for much longer. Niall Kennedy reports that Yahoo! is embracing microformats. Yahoo! Local is supporting the hcard, hreview, and hcal markup—tags that let sites list contacts, reviews (of restaurants, for example), and events listed on blogs andsites from across the web.

According to the Yahoo Local|Maps blog:

We believe in giving you more control over your data and the user experience on Yahoo! Local. With our microformat support, we???ve opened up new data and new possibilities for the developer community to build upon, to make tools that will be genuinely useful to all our users.

With Yahoo! adopting microformats, Google can’t be far behind and edge content may become mainstream sooner than I expected.

06/24/06 | 0 Comments | Microformats go mainstream

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