[uf-new] proposal for a new microformat: hStatus

[Stefan Domanske]

Hello,

I would like to hear your opinion about my idea: a new microformat for
personal status messages. As far as I can see this proposal has not
been discussed yet. If you still worked on this I am sorry.

Problem:
--------

With social platforms like facebook.com or twitter.com you are able to
show everybody or just your buddies what you are currently doing.
Unfortunately there is no option to set your status on all your
favorite services at once. You have to do it manually on every single
service scattered over the web.

In addition there is widespread use instant-messaging services like
Jabber, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, Y!, MSN and many more. You can set your
online status in every protocol, too. Instead showing whether they are
online or idle, many users started to put their current activities as
online status, e. g. »doing the laundry« or »watching the Simpson's
movie«.

Furthermore, some users started to embed their status, in parts from
twitter/facebook status, in other parts form their IM service, on
their websites. This is done via badges, jscript or iframes at this
moment.


Solution:
---------
One may solve this problem with a microformat for your status, e. g.
hStatus. The expected benefit of a hStatus microformat is, that every
instant-messaging client or social service, even your own blog or
website, can fetch your status (mood, activity ...) from one other IM
client or website that supports hStatus. You can declare any service
as master source.

The structure for this microformat is pretty lean, it just requires
zwo fields: status (a text string that indicates what ever you want it
to indicate) and timestamp. The timestamp may be parsed as relative
time (e. g. 18 minutes ago) by the client. The formatting of the
timestamp is definitely a point to discuss.
I would like to discuss, if a third field is appropriate: in some
cases it may be usefully to integrate a field to differ the type of
the status: activity, mood, message. From my  humble point of view
this is not necessary for the use cases mentioned above.


Code:
-----
This may be the Code for hStatus, as I would describe it:

<div id="hStatus" class="status">
<span class="nickname">Nickname</span>
<div class="status">Text of status or activity here</div>
<div class="timestamp">2007-08-10 08:36:00 +2</div> </div>

I am looking forward for your responses.

I also will also post this suggestion in German on my weblog
http://domanske.de later.

Best,

Stefan
-- 
Rettmers Höhe 38 • 21335 Lüneburg • Germany
M: +491778343445 • F: +49721151503220
http://www.domanske.de • stefan at domanske.de