Some of you may have missed this but Bing, Google, and Yahoo have come togeather to bring us Schema.org. Which is to help give meta data to your pages and content. There you go, have fun.
cool, but will it still be ‘valid HTML’ ?
Becouse I like using the validators
For once, this actually looks as if it might have some promise. Every other semantic meta-data tool/technique before it has been pretty awful, but they seem to have found a sane middle-ground and I could see this becoming quite popular, especially when the SEO spammers get a sniff of it the second someone large (Facebook?) starts using it.
I’m really struggling to see the point of it. It’s adding a massive load of overhead to the code (I look forward to seeing DS60’s comments!), and for what benefit? The only answer I can think of is that it will allow content scrapers (including search engines) easier access to your data, which they can present in their own way, meaning fewer people visiting your site.
Well as long as you are not asking me…Because I don’t know. 
I’m just a messenger. Not some “SEO” type person.
But it seems meta data for whatever reason is important to some people, thus Microformats.org
Would it not benefit those services that wish to utilise your data? For example, if you were running a movie review website, if someone were to search up movie reviews on Google it could parse your data easier and generate a bespoke results page containing your information.
Yes, there won’t be much benefit for the average user, but if I’ve understood it correctly it offers more flexibility with information and for those that use it.
Exactly. It allows other websites to use the information on your site for their own ends. You’ll get no credit for it, no links, no traffic, nothing. I consider myself as generous and altruistic as the next web developer, but that’s a step too far even for me.
They can do that already…even without extra metadata. All this does it give search engines an easier time indexing your data.
Generally, it could be helpful to make it easier for search engines to index your data … especially regarding the daily increase of web pages.
But these schemas and tags they presented us on schema.org are, in my opinion, too voluminous!! They will blow up the source code!!