Why Microformats? An introduction to Microformats.

Where Microformats Might Take Us

This article is about gazing into the crystal ball, to see what kind of Web will be possible when microformats can be found in the vast majority of web pages.

The Essence of the Microformatted Web

The Web is on path to a point where data will transcend any single website. There are several core properties, presented below, that will provide the foundations of this new Web.

Del.icio.us is a primitive example of this.

  • It pulls data from other websites (URLs) and re-organises them into bookmarks around a topic.
  • It then enables this data to be shared into other websites and tools.

Del.icio.us can do this because the URL is a well-defined machine-readable standard.
Microformats will bring this advantage to other data.

The Knowledge Grid

Our current Web has been referred to as ‘islands of information’, neatly surmising the inherent problems of websites. With Microformats, everything you publish has its own API - its own tools that enable it to be consumed by more than just a simple browser. Your information takes on a life beyond which any single publisher could conceive for it. We shall see websites and software that aggregate and reconstruct the information in ways highly relevant to specific niches.

For example, when you view a web article, the browser will automatically indicate a ‘fit’ between you and the author, possibly using a traffic light system (red for different viewpoints; green for a shared outlook). You would not react directly to this indicator, but it would be one of many little clues (along with things like the introduction) that dictate whether you give time to the whole article.

Ubiquitous Social Network

The Web itself will be a social network - there will be no single isolated social networking website - people, information and events will be identified and relationships automatically inferred.

Presently, we have to opt-in to a limited social network. In the future, we will have to choose when not to be a part of it.

For example, your browser could inform you that this document’s author,

  • holds a Computer Science degree
  • did a dissertation on the Semantic Web
  • has a fluffy writing style

Thus you can quickly decide whether to continue reading or not.

Lightweight Trust

Trust will be used to imply the authority of Web documents. However, unlike the Semantic Web, it will not attempt to guarantee the document’s authority. Such guarantees are both complex and imperfect, as ‘trust’ is a decision unique to each person.

The Web will enable you to make an informed decision, by presenting facts to you about an author.

For example, when you load a new web page, the browser will tell you about the author’s

  • Previous work, relevant to the web page’s topic.
  • Reviews of their previous work.
    (Using hReviews, and presenting an average score).
  • A summary of the tags that were applied. (Popular tags give an informative snapshot of opinion, such as stating the author is associated with the ‘Web’, and has a ‘Liberal bias’).

Your relationships within the ubiquitous social network will also affect trust, with an instant indication given of how many degrees of separation lay between you and the person whose trustworthiness you are deciding.

What Sort of Products will we See?

These ideas could be fulfilled by widespread adoption of the current microformats.

Background Information in your Browser

For significant parts of a web page - such as a name, a review, an event or a link to another document - the browser will be able to detect them and provide additional facts.

For example, suppose you are reading a BBC news article. The article references Mick Jagger. It also contains their review of his new album, and a description of an upcoming Rolling Stones gig.

As the browser can now precisely detect these items, it can automatically fetch you background information. You no longer have to search for it manually.

It could instantly tell you:

  • A biography of Mick Jagger.
  • His previous albums and gigs; and a snapshot of public opinion for each.
  • Alternate reviews - and an average score - of the new album. (This gives balance to the BBC’s review).
  • More details on the event and directions for getting there. It could even tell you other people in attendance (and if you know any of them).

The Personal Assistant

A successful service would be specific to a niche, such as ‘Medical Appointments’. This enables it to,

  • Successfully share data, as each niche has its own unique properties that need representing.
  • Be easy to use, as it has a focused purpose.
  • Provide specialised functionality only relevant to that niche, such as booking ‘emergency appointments’.
  • Still coordinate with other ‘niche’ systems for basic timeslot arrangements.

New services will appear that can organise and coordinate your daily events. This will become possible due to the easy data sharing Microformats will enable.

The system will be zero effort; the only interaction required is to approve its suggestions; or request it organises an event.

Approving a Suggestion

  • You are invited to an event. Before you are alerted, the system automatically chooses a timeslot. The timeslot is based on your available time, and the priority you have previously given to invitations of this kind.
  • The assistant suggests the timeslot, and you approve or decline it.

Scheduling a new Event

  • You have four meetings scheduled for the day.
  • As you are unwell, you tell the system to book an urgent doctors appointment.The assistant will simply ask you to approve a suggested timeslot, based on the doctor’s availability.
  • The system begins negotiating with other people’s assistants to find new times to conduct the four meetings. It will automatically calculate the best timeslots based on the five calendars, and the five individual preferences. Each person will see this as a simple invite to approve a new time.

Product Recommendations and Local Event Finder (Web-Wide)

Why are reviews and events so significant?

  • Products and events have an associated cost. You have paid for them. Therefore, without saying anything else, you have made it clear you are interested in these things.
  • If you have taken the time to write a review, you obviously cared about the item. It had an impact on you.
  • Least importantly, what your review actually says indicates a feeling towards that item. That is, reviews are a precise indicator of taste.

Today, your reviews and events are locked away within websites such as Amazon and Craigslist. This reduces the possibilities for such powerful information.

As Amazon has already demonstrated in a limited way, tastes can be used to bring people together. For example, their feature “Customers who viewed this item also viewed”.

By using reviews from anyone, anywhere on the Web, we can globally unite people in their tastes. With this comes the potential to introduce them to brand new products, information and events.

An Example of the System

  • You post your reviews and upcoming events on your blog, web page or perhaps your favourite community website. (You are no longer tied to one limited service; Microformats help decentralise the Web).
  • New services appear that find everybody’s reviews and events; and unites people with similar tastes.
  • You are informed of new products, information and events that people like you are interested in. For the events, it could even make suggestions for specific attendees you might like to meet.

It is the local event recommendations that are most interesting. The Web will no longer try to virtualise your relationships. Instead it will actively make it easier to get more from your day to day life.

How will this work?

Ideally, one or two companies will take the challenge of aggregating all the review and event information.

This information will then be shared, using some Web-workable business model, with small-but-highly-focused services that cater to your interests (e.g. recommendations based around music).

Recommendations can of course extend to anything that can be uniquely identified, including web pages, images, video, people, events and more.

A simple example,

  • Technorati aggregates the Microformatted information on the Web, and supplies it to a music recommendation service for the price of $2 per 1000 music-related data items (e.g. an album review found on a user’s blog).
  • The music recommender works its magic inferring relationships within the data.
  • The music recommender presents suggestions to users; as well as sponsored recomendations that may be of interest (the advertising model). They would also offer access to such music for a fixed monthly fee (perhaps via affiliation with an iTunes type service).

Summary

A Microformatted Web does not require a huge personal undertaking to become a reality. It simply requires everyone to chip in.

Bloggers will add biographic information to their blogs. They will publish reviews and events using Microformats. They will identify their friends using the Microformat social network (XFN). They will be core to this movement.

Web page creators will use Microformats to identify themselves as authors; and participants in social networks (e.g. MySpace) will do likewise to ensure their bio can be consumed by Microformat-aware services.

Finally, there are the web application developers. They will be able to have considerable impact, by updating software to automatically Microformat huge chunks of data very easily.

We are currently seeing the emergence of a Web that we interact with, not browse. A Web where we not only consume the content, we create it. Supported by broadband and a mainstream following, this is what we collectively call ‘Web 2.0′.

In the near future, this will just be ‘the Web’, and we will start seeking to eliminate the remaining big issues. The biggest of them all, a problem actually exacerbated by our current desire to create content, is information overload.

Microformats will be the tool that we use to cut through the excess information. They will provide us with precise control over the interesting data around us.

Microformats are the next big stage of the interactive Web.

The simple foundations of a Microformatted Web will enable supporting software to accurately identify people, relationships and events. We will see a new breed of Web applications that break down the traditional barriers of a ‘website’. Applications that help organise us, help bring us together and help make us more knowledgeable. Applications that empower us.

Microformats belong not to big corporations, but to us. The people who actually create the content. The people who benefit from it. Therefore we can, should, and will be the ones to spearhead the Web’s next major evolution.