There’s currently a tonne of social Web 2.0 sites which encourage people to join and then rate content which the community can then benefit from - Douban, Riffs, and StumbleUpon to name but a few. (See eHub for more.)
Perhaps even better tools could arise in the future which not only provide the space to write, share and rate reviews but primarily aggregate bloggers’ reviews.
A few years ago, RSS feeds weren’t a standard part of blogging software and now that they are, tools such as Technorati (and every other blog search tool being created) are an incredibly useful way of finding out what bloggers are saying about you, or something else.
Imagine that RSS was made a lot smarter than just a post title, excerpt, author and timestamp - because not every blog post should have the exact same structural format. Since RSS is just XML, it can be as flexible as we want it to be. Let’s say that when I wrote a post about a movie, the RSS output for that post would be structured in a sensible format for movie reviews - I could give it 5-star rating and then a third party aggregator could pick up all the reviews out there on the web about that movie and provide an overall rating… and so on.
Instead of signing up to a site and writing my movie reviews there, if I had a blog I’d write all my movie reviews on my own blog and they’d be nicely sucked into a movie review service. I own all my content on my own blog but I still get the benefits of shared wisdom.
Structured blogging has the means for this dream that bloggers will use tools to create smarter RSS feeds that others can use to aggregate similar content. I just installed their Wordpress plugin (there’s one for MovableType too) and it works well with Wordpress 2.0.
By default, you can write reviews (abum, book, cafe, club/bar, event, hotel/resort, local Service, magazine, movie/TV, restaurant, software, song, website), events, lists, audio, video, people showcase, group showcase and other post types. It’s an open-source initiative and hopefully it will eventually be integrated tightly into blogging products.
You may just start seeing me using some of these post types in the near future and then I’ll aggregate them (e.g. my current favourite albums/movies/books in the sidebar).
I’m excited about structured blogging opportunities!
your thoughts
Michael Arrington
Rachel,
YES! I agree with you 100%. What excites me is not centralized gardens of content (like ebay), but the wonderful, decentralized, messy aggregations of blog and other content at the edge of the network. I’ve written about Riffs, which I don’t like, and other sites which are starting to realize that there is all this great content already out there on the open web. Things like structured blogging really help, but the data is already out there in unstructured format, too. Ready to be aggregated and, perhaps, monetized.
Wonderful post.
Hagrin
I really like your site (just discovered it) and your unique inisghts.
Say hello to the Google Base API. When Google releases an API for their Base application, they may force an XML format/standard for the different content types out there. Currently, when you do a bulk upload, there are certain XML labels you can use per content type. Now, open up that format so that all social sites can standardize the content, register your feed, let the social sites order and categorize your content and you have the RSS world you want.
I don’t think your wish is that far off to be honest.
gareth
The idea behind Microformats (www.microformats.org) is similar to this idea - using standardised markup for commonly used site elements. In fact the hReview proposal (http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview) covers standard attributes for reviews.
TechCrunch » More Edge Reviews - iNods
[...] There is no way centralized review sites like Yelp, Riffs, Judy’s Book and others can compete with the blogosphere over the long run. Those sites will also have to gather decentralized content, or become meaningless. More and more people are realizing this and writing about it - a good post by Rachel Cunliffe (one example) is here. Tags: inods, techcrunch, web2.0, web+2.0 Categories: Company & Product Profiles | Bookmark this post with del.icio.us [...]
Colin Donald
Hi Rachel,
Catching up with your post via RoJo…
I completely agree that structured blogging/microformats has the potential to be a huge leap forward. When I was giving a presentation about user-generated content recently, I dubbed it The Age of Mass Criticism, to emphasise the point that everyone will be able to use these tools to review anything.
I’m still asking the question: what will the consequences be when people start reviewing their local hospital or government services?
More here:
http://www.futurescape.co.uk/content/view/16/27/
http://www.futurescape.co.uk/content/view/18/27/
Mark Wilson
(Great site. Why don’t you have trackbacks on your WP blog?) I am also focussing on the structured blogging and 2.0 aspect of blogging. I enjoyed your view about extending RSS. You may enjoy reading my post on an extension to RSS that I think is vital: http://reblogger.wordpress.com/2006/02/08/blog-content-ownership-and-control/
SHEMALES
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.