Why should I use XFN in my HTML?

Question

What is the benefit of using XFN (XHTML Friends Network)? I've seen this on multiple blogs and social networking sites but I don't really understand why it's useful. Other than being able to style these elements with CSS3 and select them with JavaScript, what's the benefit? Do you know of any sites out there that really utilize XFN to enhance the user experience? Also, are there similar alternatives to XFN?

Answer 1

Do you know of any sites out there that really utilize XFN to enhance the user experience?

Microformats aren't meaned to show extra information on the website itself, if it was, it could be used like <a href="www.websiteofafriendofmine.com>Friend met: John</a> instead of <a href="www.websiteofafriendofmine.com" rel="friend met">John</a>. You should think in another direction, for example, maybe browsers will support microformats one day.

Search engines may find this XFN-information interesting for one or another reason to see how the world is connected; I'm not sure what they actually could do with this information. You can read about that on Wikipedia

By the way, you can find out who your friends on the web are using Google's Social Graph API

Also, are there similar alternatives to XFN?

Take a look at microformat.org's wiki