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27 Aou 2004
Characteristics
Now that we got the (vague) definition out of the way, we need to specify more. Marc Canter often defines microcontent by some examples. I do not find this enough. I think there must be more in common. I see microcontent as a family with some common characteristics. In this post I want to discuss those common characteristics.
First of all there is the common definition.
Microcontent is structured content. It is like a record in a database. Microcontent has one or more fields and each field has well defined semantics. A record in a database is not really a good comparison as structure might become very complex. Only think of a list of ingredients in an OpenRecipe. Each ingredient is already a record in the database sense.
Each member of the microcontent family has the same common fields. I am not sure what these fields must be, but i am thinking of the author_name, creation date, title, summary, author_address, foaf_address, etc. These fields all relate to general characteristics of the content. (Does the Dublin Core help here?)
Another important aspect of microcontent is its openness. Microcontent is open to be used by other people and this requirement has several consequences. This aspect is Marc Canter’s subscribable to.
Microcontent is content that is published. And this publish events requires several fields, which are common to members of the family.
As Marc Canter already stated, every piece of microcontent must have a unique URL, the permalink. This allows others to syndicate the microcontent. Note that this will exclude a lot of content. For instance if I add a blogroll to weblog, but do not offer it also as a separate URL, it is not Microcontent. Although it could be.
Other fields can probably be found in the RSS-standard or in the Dublin Core. One can think of publication date, expiration date, etc.
And there must be technical requirements that are common to all members. I guess XML is a good one for markup. And there might be requirements about the publication method (HTML, RSS, Atom, Email, etc.)