We’ve all played around with FaceBook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Flickr and mySpace, it’s fun and it’s a great way to stay connected. Well now there is a geeky way to connect and although it’s not new it is becoming the new trend on the web. It’s called microformats and it’s all in the code.

What are microformats?
According to microformats.org they are “designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards”.

So what does that really mean?
Microformats are embedded in web pages using bits of xhtml to represent things like people, tags or events. Microformats support feeds and APIs for your website in the fastest and simplest way. And they also help provide a way to publish reliable information on the Web.

So what do these bits of code look like?
Technorati uses the RelTag to tag it’s blogs RSS feeds, the code looks something like this:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]" rel="tag">[tagname]</a>

You can find out more about Technorati tags here.

So what does this have to do with Social Networking?
Meet XFN™ (XHTML Friends Network) the microformat that puts the ‘human face’ on linking. Huh? Ok, let’s say I’m friends with KB and I also worked with her, my link to her would read like this:

<a href="http://kgbfiles.blogspot.com/" rel="friend co-worker">KB</a>

Now she could also link to me the same way then others can see how we are connected, make sense? Here are other tags that can be used:

acquaintance: Someone who you have exchanged greetings with
contact: Someone you know how to get in touch with
met: Someone who you have actually met in person
colleague: Someone in the same field of work/study
muse: Someone who brings you inspiration
sweetheart: Someone close to you
crush: Someone you have a crush on

So why do people do it?
I think the point of XFN is help connect your contacts across multiple networks. Doesn’t it drive you crazy every time you join a new network and you have to fill out your profile and then invite all your friends to join? XFN makes it easy by making your information portable. Plaxo says it best, “we believe strongly that users should have ownership, control, and portability of their profiles and friends list. No service you use should claim your data as their own and keep it trapped in their “walled garden”.” Nicely put. Although not all Social Networks are XFN friendly it is predicted to become the norm of the semantic web and not just for Geeks.

If you want more information on XFN check out these sites and articles:
Xhtml friendly network
XFN, relationship minefield
XFN for n00bs
Building a open Social Graph

There has been a lot of buzz on the internet lately about the blog “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” written by Fake Steve Jobs or maybe the real Steve Jobs, who knows, but there are people trying to find out and they will go to great lengths to figure it out. The blog is well written, insightful to the goings on at Apple and always amusing. I just laugh every time I think about how he has listed “Mock turtlenecks” under his interests. The point is people are reading it and commenting on it. We are getting to know what’s new at Apple and most importantly we are being entertained, what great marketing!

West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers have also developed a clever way to market on-line with Cheddar Vision. 24 hours a day you can watch the cheddar age! Sound completely boring? Well Cheddar Vision has quite the following, with groups on FaceBook and MySpace this cheddar is getting a lot of coverage! It has even been rumored that the cheddar was invited to a wedding…

Another effective marketing method is using on-line social networks to distribute an ad like this one. It has made it’s way around YouTube, reddit and Digg.

Some content, especially humorous content, has incredible potential to take advantage of viral marketing using on-line social networks and blogs. Isotope Communications is responsible for the marketing on Cheddar Vision and hopefully we will never find out who is responsible for the writings for the Fake Steve Jobs’ blog but I think these are very innovated and effective methods to marketing on-line.