If you look on microformats.org you’ll see the beginnings of a draft for hProduct. Unfortunately it looks like it hasn’t gotten much attention in the last few years. I fielded an internal request here to start looking into hProduct for our product detail pages, but clearly hProduct really isn’t ready for prime time. There must have been a reason it has basically been abandoned by the microformat community.

Upon further research, I’m seeing that hProduct’s complexity and breadth could be the issue here. Products are so diverse and can carry so many different attributes — how can you possibly marginalize it into a standard microformat without including huge amounts unstructured data?

There’s also a design aspect to this. Our current PDPs have product attributes strewn about the page in a logical “order”. Without muddying the codeblock, how would one introduce or enforce style and visual standards?

I equate gaining marketshare in this internet economy to a millitary conflict. The army that wins will be swift, quick to react — guerilla in nature. It will be able to mobilize a smaller number of forces in a shorter period of time to achieve a greater impact.

We (my company) are the Goliath of the war. Great in number, but slow to react. Plodding, marching slowly, sometimes just keeping up.

I feel a revolution is in order.