Comments on: Microformats Usage http://blog.andrewparker.net/2007/01/04/microformats-usage/ Tech, Entrepreneurship, and Venture Capital in New York City Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:40:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: Jonah http://blog.andrewparker.net/2007/01/04/microformats-usage/comment-page-1/#comment-41193 Jonah Sun, 07 Jan 2007 18:24:21 +0000 http://blog.andrewparker.net/2007/01/04/microformats-usage/#comment-41193 Pat answer: Seen the platypus? Innovation/evolution is rife with dead ends. You could do Mad Libs with your closing 'graph and swap in any of the following: Solar Power in the 80s, Virtually Any Early-Stage Biotech Company, Cold Fusion, High Energy Physics, and on and on... Not so pat answer: Evangelism for this product is necessary because like a similar virtual "product" tagging, its commercial potential is not viable until /after/ it achieves significant adoption, at least in the bleeding-edge community. While tagging was/is the ultimate FNAC for many web-pundit types, the question "Why did Yahoo buy Flickr not Photobucket?" is illustrative I think: one treats pixels as a commodity, the other as the foundation for a community, and tagging was essential to the realization of that vision. Bringing this next level of "connectedness" to the internet experience is worth evangelizing and pursuing, because this "feature" can be potentially leveraged to build Flickr2.0 (whatever that is), make the web easier/smarter/more fun to use, and get rich. And now on to the eternal VC question "But what's the killer app?" :o) Pat answer: Seen the platypus? Innovation/evolution is rife with dead ends. You could do Mad Libs with your closing ‘graph and swap in any of the following: Solar Power in the 80s, Virtually Any Early-Stage Biotech Company, Cold Fusion, High Energy Physics, and on and on…

Not so pat answer: Evangelism for this product is necessary because like a similar virtual “product” tagging, its commercial potential is not viable until /after/ it achieves significant adoption, at least in the bleeding-edge community. While tagging was/is the ultimate FNAC for many web-pundit types, the question “Why did Yahoo buy Flickr not Photobucket?” is illustrative I think: one treats pixels as a commodity, the other as the foundation for a community, and tagging was essential to the realization of that vision. Bringing this next level of “connectedness” to the internet experience is worth evangelizing and pursuing, because this “feature” can be potentially leveraged to build Flickr2.0 (whatever that is), make the web easier/smarter/more fun to use, and get rich. And now on to the eternal VC question “But what’s the killer app?” :o)

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