I’m just now catching up on yesterday’s announcement of StructuredBlogging, a non-profit initiative to add some structured data into blogging. That should get the XML purists and those sufferring from FFTP (Free-Form Text Phobia) excited.
Snarky comments aside, there’s a bigger agenda in place, which affects even the less technical crowd. By adding structure, we can take blogging to a whole new level of uses, and expand from having conversations, to focus on killing CraigsList. Or at least share some of the revenues. Ok, I lied about snarky comments aside.
Why Structure is a Good Thing(tm)
Think of the world from the eyes of a blogger. You want people to come to you, not come to them. You want your stuff in your place, not all over the place. It’s not just about ego, it’s about convenience, usefulness, identity and reputation.
If I’m writing reviews, I want to have them on my blog. I don’t have the time to put my book reviews on Amazon and my movie reviews on NetFlix and my cellphone review on Eopinions and my bicycle reviews on MTB. Besides being more convenient, it also establishes an identity. Would you trust my first NetFlix review if you knew I’m a top reviewer on Amazon? But you have no way of finding that out.
Reputation goes along with identity. If I know your eBay ratings, I’m more likely to want to buy something from you over CL. But right now all that useful information gets broken down into bits and pieces, that are then scattered over the net and placed in focused mega-site, instead of being owned by whoever created them.
The more services we have out there — reviews, listings, events, social networks, forums — the more time you spend putting content in the “right place” and the less useful that content is to you, simply because it’s fragmented all over the place.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s no technical justification why I can’t search the net for events happening today in the BayArea, reviews of Narnia, or someone willing to sell me an 802.11g card for $20 (hint, hint). And there’s no reason why I need a site for each one of these searches.
This is where structure comes in. Because computers are powerful, but stupid. They can search it all, but they can’t tell it’s an event unless you somehow mark it as such, and they can’t tell it’s happening today unless you mark the start date. They need some help, some structure.
Less is more: Microformats
A simple solution, it turns out, is to just add a little bit of marking to blog posts that helps computers understand the relevant stuff. That’s what Microformats are all about. They add a little bit of tags to help you mark an event, review, or anything else you may want to specify.
It’s fairly hackish, but very effective in dealing with the more useful structures. I don’t think we’ll be seeing Microformats for deadling with expense reports and shipping orders, but I also don’t care. When it comes to finding stuff on the Web, Microformats cover it well.
One of the core principles is humans first, machines second. But I’ve used Microformats from the technology end of it, and compared to other technologies, it’s also easy for machines and for the humans that program them.
Purity and Dryness
I have to admit to some personal agenda. I have this sliver of hope that if Microformats catch up, not only will they be more useful to you and me, but they will also prove that we don’t need to use XML all over the place.
XML is the pure way of dealing with structure, and it has a lot of benefits. Unfortunately, all too often XML is being used where a simpler solution exists, turning one problem into another. After all, structure for the sake of structure is just another form of chaos.
And here lies my gripe with StructuredBlogging. In addition to microformats, we also get X-Subnote. And you use X-Subnote to publish the exact same content, but duplicated as XML and then folded back into the HTML. And in doing so, X-Subnotes violates two design principles:
1. If a simpler solution exists, go solve something else.
2. Do not repeat yourself.
Now, as a user I probably don’t care much about what format the content is, or which design principles gets violated, all that is just geeky meta talk. Does it work? Does it help me find the stuff I need, and promote the stuff I have?
Yes, but there’s a lesson the Internet teaches us about technologies. Those that have low barriers to entry get adopted fast, spread quickly and spring new and compelling uses at lower price points. Those that have high barrier to entry also have less competition, and so less innovation.
The benefit of low barrier technologies is that fact that I’m sitting here blogging, instead of posting on an AOL forum and paying $49/month for the privilege. We used simple, sometimes hackish, technologies to get here, do we really want to stop now?
Are Blogs the new 3270?
Here’s an interesting screencast about XML-driven structured blogging. That’s the type of stuff you can’t do with Microformats, they just don’t extend that far. But is it interesting? Are you really looking forward to the day when you can blog a purchase order or a sales invoice?
I got this screencast from Alex Barnett’s blog. A few weeks before, he posted this:
“the chance of a standard being adopted is inversely proportional to its complexity”
Blogging purchase orders looks to me like a solution waiting for a problem. We have XForms for dealing with entry and display of structured data. Databases that just live to store that stuff, and back-end systems designed to do something interesting with it. And yes, you can also pull it out as XML, and display it as HTML, and have all sorts of fancy graphs and charts.
But would I “blog” it? Why?
Maybe I’m missing the whole point for this use of XML in HTML, maybe it is better than Microformats. If so, can someone please explain ot to me?
Photo by Carrick
Labnotes » Blog Archive » StructuredBlogging, Redux
Web2.0Focus, 关注该关注的… » 结构是好东西ï¼Microformats
Labnotes » Blog Archive » More on StructuredBlogging
NeverLand » links for 2006-01-02
Alex Barnett blog : It is *my* Attention data and identity