PubSub is leading the cause for structured blogs and has some nice simple examples for book and music reviews replete with links to buy on Amazon. At Attensa we have been looking closely at structured data types, beyond even those of blog origin, and hope that standards such of these catch on (at a minimum) with mainstream consumers. Obviously internet retailers will also benefit if such structured blogging is accepted…and at Attensa we believe the results can be dramatically improved for all participants.
Enter “attention streams”
Structured blogs in our view might be just half the equation, as it will be sophisticated (and anonymous) utilization of attention data that will make examples such as these truly useful to consumers AND the businesses that will ultimately benefit. Charlene Li’s blog has several other consumer level ideas that are particularly conducive to the structured blog approach. John Batelle goes even further discussing the implications on search and tagging.
All of these ideas though are predominantly consumer-centric. While interesting and useful, we feel the real opportunity is most certainly in the enterprise including CRM and throughout the supply chain. Imagine structured blogs from everything from RFPs to Expense Management to Annual Reviews to Applications for Employment. Consumers and retailers will no doubt benefit from structured blogs but it will be miniscule compared to the potential in the enterprise. That’s my (Attensa’s) take anyway.
