Microformats: Catching On Like Wild Fire

In 2005 microformats made their debut. Now, two years later, microformats are working their way toward becoming a viable option for the advancement of the semantic web with nearly a half a billion pieces of microformated information available.

Still the majority of data has yet to be marked-up using microformats which begs the question, what will it take for microformats to reach the heights of its popularity? This presentation begins by providing a quick, concise overview including basic functionality and history. It focuses on the social responsibilities, practical barriers, and unintentional results that could occur from easily sharing machine consumable information. When the intent of microformats is to share and expose data, it’s ironic that the very technology inspired to achieve this may actually encourage the opposite.

As with many new technologies there are technical and social challenges to overcome but are usually well worth the benefits. I will discuss some of these less obvious consequences, and at the same time, explore various solutions which could be adopted in order to expedite popularity and increase utility of microformats. I will examine what has been accomplished thus far, what to expect in the future and what this means for the semantic web.

As microformats expand and grow we will expect to see more applications being developed to consume and publish microformated data. Only two years old, this technology holds much potential and promise to expediting the semantic web and facilitating web services in an enterprise infrastructure.