The more services I see roll out that aggregate content from “the edge,” the more convinced I become that this represents a considerable shift in publishing models that will become more and more common. The idea, if it’s new to you, is simple. Rather than send your content to someone else to publish—such as a classified ad in a newspaper—you publish it on your own site and tag it appropriately so sites that aggregate such content can add it to their listings.

There is a growing number of examples, from classified ad aggregator Edgeio to the Memeorandum series of sites that collect news from around the web, aggregate it, and rank it based on popularity.

But the entry of Technorati, the 800-pound gorilla of blog search, into the edge-content arena may signify that the concept is about to grow in terms of both visibility and use.

On its Kitchen test site, Technorati has introduced the ability to search for microformat content, specifically events, contacts, and reviews. In order to get an event listed as a search result—which presents its findings chronologically—all you have to do is publish the event on your own site or blog using the correct microformating, as in this example.

Technorati—which is already out there scouring blogs—would identify this an event using the hcalendar microformat, and list it, as in the example below, a search for San Francisco events:

The syntax for microformats is pretty simple, and I can’t imagine why organizations wouldn’t start including them for all their events and contacts to increase visibility. And the more I think about the whole “edge” concept, the more potential I see for intranets. More on that later, after I’ve had a chance to turn it over in my mind a bit.

In the meantime, Technorati has also launched Pingerati. According to the site:

Pingerati receives updates of pages with Microformat data in, and passes them on to services that are interested in indexing them. With the growth of services that publish and index microformats, there is a need to connect the publishers with the indexers. The ‘ping to update’ model has worked well with weblogs, but is not ideal for other kinds of pages that may contain microformats.

Hat tip to Stowe Boyd, who also likes the idea:

This is a great example of supporting the edge activities of individuals with core infrastructure. Partnering with companies like EVDB and Upcoming.org, Technorati is taking another step forward in supporting the critical principle of individuals controlling their own information.