[uf-discuss] FYI: Jeff Jarvis on microformats and Google Base

Tue Nov 22 05:56:53 PST 2005

Jon Tan wrote:
> Searching for products, property and jobs could be revolutionised 
> by MFs and immensely valuable for all users, whether they know what 
> the blogosphere is or not. If it was ever seriously suggested that 
> until current ones are in widespread use others should be on hold 
> or not be discussed it would be unfortunate.

Here's what I'd like to see: less talk of the hypothetical revolution 
microformats might usher in, and more actual implementations. There 
are currently so few sites with microformats that it's entirely 
feasible to list them all in the wiki. There's no need for a search 
engine like Google to get involved. I think we should create a large 
enough base of information that it requires a search engines before 
we waste too much time trying to pressure search engines to parse the 
data.
> In the meantime in regard to the GBase question my point was that 
> they have their app now.

Precisely. In one day, Google Base collected more structured 
information than they could in a month of parsing all existing 
microformatted data on the web. Google wants data to attract 
searchers. Real data. No amount of hypothetical data will attract a 
search engine, regardless of how well that hypothetical data is 
publicized.
Peace,
Scott