Microformat content may now be searched with Technorati’s latest service; also, the company’s Pingerati microformat ping distributor has been put into place.
Technorati’s chief technologist Tantek elik posted the news about Technorati’s new search for microformat content at the Technorati blog. elik characterized the debut as a welcome to “the realtime microformats web.”
People may be using microformats now without realizing it. The first implementation of microformats was Technorati’s rel=”tag” attribute, used to tag content by subject or author.
elik sees even greater potential now that microformats have begun to grow in number and utility. He explained how they will benefit millions of web publishers:
Microformats enable any site to easily publish common data types such as tags, licenses, contacts, events, reviews, listings, etc. on any page on the Web, with only minor edits to their HTML. For me personally, this has meant enabling millions of people to take control of their own data, publish and update it wherever they want, whenever they want, and move it freely among services, without having it locked up behind a walled garden or trapped in a “roach motel”.
Three schema called hCard, hCalendar, and hReview have been made available from Microformats.org for others to use. Each schema allows a publisher to define the content of contacts, events, and reviews. Technorati’s new microformat search can be used to look for blogs and sites publishing content defined with these schema.
The Pingerati service works with sites that publish content and use microformats. Pingerati can handle microformat updates from any web page, whether it is a blog or not. Technorati’s existing ping service can pick up microformats from blogs, so nothing special needs to be done with those sites.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
