[uf-discuss] microformats search and pinging

Thu Jun 1 08:22:01 PDT 2006

On Jun 1, 2006, at 1:00 AM, Kevin Marks wrote:
> On May 31, 2006, at 10:14 PM, Scott Reynen wrote:
>>> On May 31, 2006, at 9:29 PM, Tantek Çelik wrote:
>>>>> There are some indexers of specific microformats right now (e.g. 
>>> Reevoo and
>>> Kritx both index hReviews), but no general microformats search 
>>> engine.
>>>> Hmm... I'm pretty sure I was indexing contacts, events, and 
>> reviews several months ago here:
>> Great stuff Scott, do you want to get pings relayed?
>> Do you have a REST interface for us to send you URLs that ping 
> Pingerati?

Six months ago, when I made my little tool, I wrote [1]:
"I'm not looking to start a new public search engine — just 
demonstrate that someone with more time and experience than I and 
maybe an existing web crawler (*cough cough*) could do something like 
this."
Those coughs were links to Tantek and Kevin at Technorati. Now that 
someone (Technorati) with more time and experience (and money) than I 
has done something like what I did, I'm not sure I'll be continuing. 
I got what I was asking for.
What I didn't expect was this feeling that microformats are 
increasingly just another product owned and sold by Technorati. I'm 
disappointed that Technorati has apparently developed selective 
amnesia here regarding others' work. Tantek says "Technorati 
believes in the voice of the individual," [2] but here I am, an 
individual, and everyone from Technorati is pretending like I don't 
exist except where I could contribute more data toward Technorati's 
profit. I have no doubt that if I had done the same work at a 
corporation, I wouldn't be seeing phrases like "no general 
microformats search engine" and "first of a kind" coming out of 
Technorati. And I'm certainly not the only individual who has worked 
on this. Dozens of individuals helped lay the groundwork for 
Technorati's newest product, but not a single one is acknowledged in 
Technorati's discussion of the Microformats Search - only 
corporations. This will certainly make me think twice before 
experimenting further with microformats in my free time.
[1] http://weblog.randomchaos.com/archive/2005/11/30/Microformat_Base/
[2] http://technorati.com/weblog/2006/05/108.html
Peace,
Scott