[uf-discuss] MySpace and Microformats

[Ben Ward]

On 22 Sep 2009, at 17:47, Scott Reynen wrote:

> On Sep 22, 2009, at 5:56 PM, Karsten Januszewski wrote:
>
>> I was just on MySpace and noticed that /some/ profile pages are now  
>> formatted using hCard - for example: http://www.myspace.com/ 
>> irhetoric. It appears that newly created MySpace profile pages are  
>> using Microformats now. However, lots of other profile pages don't  
>> use Microformats -- I'm guessing they are generated using a  
>> different codebase. I just posted a thread on the forums (http://developer.myspace.com/Community/forums/p/9026/43520.aspx 
>> )  to see what folks say, but I couldn't find any mention of it in  
>> the press, etc.  Nonetheless -- another big win for Microformats  
>> adoption!
>
> Nice.  I've done a lot of scraping of MySpace.  In my experience,  
> they roll out changes *very* gradually, over the course of weeks, if  
> not months. So hopefully the microformat markup is part of the new  
> version and will be everywhere relatively soon.

MySpace has a branched codebase for profiles, the newer versions  
simply referred to as ‘Profiles 2.0’. 2.0 has been live for a while  
now, and upgrading from an old form profile to a new 2.0 form is  
actually in control of the MySpace user, not MySpace as a service.

The reason for this being that the MySpace community is heavily based  
around profile visual customizations, all of which depend on the old  
mark-up. If MySpace ever upgraded all users to the new profiles  
there'd be outrage because people would lose their page designs.

The number of third party templates for Profiles 2.0 is smaller than  
Profiles 1.0. So again, the incentive to switch is taking time to  
build up.

That Microformats are there in the new template though is great news!

B