Privacy and microformats

<lynX> It's the one thing you can't do with microformats, right? Or rather.. the web, the HTTP protocol, you'd first need to have a private web where we publish things just for our friends or our social network applications to implement the social-network-portability thing. Only then can we use microformats on a private scale. Does it really make sense? I'm wondering aloud. Please comment.

• In microformats one of our principles is to solve simpler problems first. Thus first we are solving the problem of public social-network-portability which really only requires hCard and XFN. For private authenticated access, the next steps are openid and oauth. And of course there is a plenty of "private web" supported today using HTTP, HTTP-AUTH, HTTPS - it makes sense to leverage those, rather than needlessly reinvent them. Tantek 18:47, 6 Sep 2007 (PDT)