May 11, 2005

hReview: The Review Microformat

Potentially big news in the world of product reviews, the hReview microformat.

What is hReview? (What is a Microformat?)

microformat - "a set of simple open data format standards that many... are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general."

hReview, introduced late last month as a draft specification, outlines a standard review format, useful for distribution and aggregation (format, examples). As stated in the scope, " Reviews consistently share several common fields. Where possible hReview has been based on this minimal common subset."

Who Is Behind hReview?

Authors come from Technorati, Yahoo, Microsoft, America Online, CommerceNet Labs and Six Apart.

Emphasis on companies with large amounts of user-created content:

Six Apart	Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal
AOL	Hometown
Microsoft	Spaces
Yahoo	360

Note the lack of pure-play comparison shopping companies...

User-Review Dynamics

Interestingly, the authors of hReview are primarily from companies that are not in the business of product reviews, or companies that are relatively weak in this area. The hReview format allows these companies to form a powerful partnership with other people who are not in the business of product reviews, their users.

Together, voila!, they are in the business of product reviews.

Disruptive technology at its finest.

But wait... why would people make their reviews freely available in such a format?

The reality is that most people already contribute their reviews for free. Whether it is to Amazon.com, a review site, or a comparison shopping engine, people contribute their reviews to the places where:
(1) their reviews have the best chance of being read (aggregation as a two-way street)
(2) they have been helped by other people's reviews (the importance of community)

Again, we go back to the different motivations of people who are not in the business of product reviews. Unlike the existing aggregators of product reviews, who must carefully consider the tradeoff of more traffic vs. losing their place in the aggregation food chain, the individual "aggregatees" have no such concerns.

Any way you slice it, the user wins.

As a shopper, they get the following:
(1) "long tail" reviews - products and services that are not covered by comparison shopping engines.
(2) unfiltered reviews - the real, naked truth, told by people who have no relationship with advertisers.

As a publisher, they get the following:
(1) control of content - edit, add, delete... it is your review.
(2) revenue potential - even micro-publishers can join the market-driven ad programs such as AdSense.

Opportunities, Threats

What is the potential long-term impact of hReview on comparison shopping engines (CSEs)?

Shopping Engines vs. Shopping Communities - shopping aggregators will need to build a richer relationship with their increasingly empowered userbase, to be worthy of user-submitted reviews. Otherwise, they risk losing the critical mass needed to maintain the read/write cycle of user reviews.

Spidering CSEs vs Non-Spidering CSEs - microformats such as hReview could deepen the divide between comparison shopping sites that have access to search spidering technology, and the have nots. Spider-enabled aggregators should be more comprehensive, by blending a primary database of in-house reviews, and a secondary database of reviews from around the Web.

The Long Road Ahead

Of course, a common format is only the first step in aggregating reviews.

Adoption by reviewers is the next step. At first, hReviews could be "all dressed up with no place to go" with no immediate user benefit. However, the supply side of the equation should be solved relatively easily via integration by a few large content management systems (CMSs).

Aggregation is the hard part. At first, when adoption is limited to a small group of tech-savvy, well-intentioned parties, aggregation will appear easy. Then, as commercial interests grow stronger, the dynamics will change. The long-term solutions will require industrial-strength reputation management.

hReview or no hReview, Technorati or no Technorati, a review microformat seems logically inevitable in the long term, so now is a good time to re-think the role of aggregators in a microformatted Web.

(authority, community...)

Word Around The Web

Niall Kennedy, "Want to get involved? Great! Check out the hReview specification, take a look at the examples, and build your own implementations for your favorite publishing tools and sites."

Om Malik, "PS: I wonder when hReview, the micro-format for reviews like this will be implemented in WordPress and other popular CMS systems like TypePad."

Jonas Luster, "You can bet your hiney there’ll be a WordPress and Drupal plugin as soon as I find the time :)"

Greg Yardley, "...any microcontent format worth its chops needs to include a clear specification of the rights granted by the original owner, and if these rights are for sale, specifies the amount and means of payment - or at least a pointer to that information."

Tantek Çelik, "Feedback is strongly encouraged."

P.S.

I think the hidden strength of this format could be the "tags" section.

hReview: The Review Microformat (1)
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on May 11, 2005 at 9:44 AM
Archived at Product Reviews

Comments

Posted by Hong Qu at January 19, 2006 12:20 PM