Microformats and the Semantic Web

As the semantic web begins to really gain momentum, it's become increasingly crucial for web developers, publishers and content producers to gain a solid understanding of the microformats that allow a website to join the party. Microformats are semantic metadata tags that use already existing HTML and XHTML information to be automatically contextually processed. While there are plenty of preexisting tags associated with content, it wasn't until the past few years that there was an method for the semantic, or contextual, meaning of the metadata. In the semantic web, microformats are what translate the metadata into signifiers of meaningful categories and associations.

According to mircroformats.org, this history of microformats began in 2003 through discussions that eventually resulted in the testing of XFN beta and the launching of XFN 1.0 later that year. XFN, or XHTML Friends Network, is an attempt at adding a personal element to linking based on types of human relationships that are indicated in a type of early microformat. In 2004, following a presentation at eTech, XFN and similar concepts were formalised under the term microformats by Tantek Celik and Kevin Marks. The first formal microformats began appearing shortly thereafter, such as hCard and hCalendar. hCard is a simple format that can represent people, groups and places and can be embedded in various standards of web publication, while hCakebdar is another open format that represents dates, scheduling and events.

In the subsequent years, a wide variety of other open microformats were conceptualized, developed and released. hCard is primarily used for contact information, while hCalendar represents an event and adr.geo denotes a geographic information. As Alex Faaborg simplifies it in his 2006 blog post on the subject of fundamental microformats, these represent the semantic answers to the queries of who, where and when in relation to a given piece of content, and the what, why and how questions are answered by the content itself. Faaborg's article goes on to explain how the modern browser is rapidbly becoming an "information broker" semantically processing feeds and microformats for a user rather simply a direct portal to the web. The increasingly contextual processing of metadata in the form of microformats is at the heart of the major shift in interfacing with the web, and it is increasingly important that web developers understand and implement microformats in order to be included in the unfolding transformation of the semantic web.

Sources:

http://microformats.org/wiki/history-of-microformats
http://gmpg.org/xfn/intro
http://tantek.com/presentations/2004etech/realworldsemanticspres.html
http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformats
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2006/12/13/microformats-part-2-the-fundamental-types/