User Review API

Here's a great new API: User Reviews from Yahoo!, the most recent extension of the Shopping APIs. 

I've always thought it would be cool to build a massive Product Reviews Wiki, but the smartest way to do it would be if the content was developed in a distributed way rather than through a big centralized wiki.  NichePublisher X would build a user reviews section of their site.  NichePublisher Y would also have a user reviews section.  If the user review data format was the same and there was a vehicle for channeling reviews between both sites, then they could leverage their respective users/contributors to make a better product reviews database for everyone involved.  They could each present data in the most sensible way for their own users and even build their own ad revenue streams on their own pages.  And both publishers would have a better offering for their users than what they could offer doing this separately.

This User Review API is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of enabling a global reviews platform of some sort.  Here's the Yahoo! User Review output format:


Tantek is proposing the review microformat standard should work something like this:

• item

  • optional:type of item (business, Web page/site, product, event, person, place, file, text)

  • name/title of item being reviewed (string | hCard if business or person)

    • optional:URL (all additional information should be somewhere else, not in the review itself)

    • optional:image (URL)

• reviewer (hCard|name|email|URL)

• review publication/authoring date (ISO8601 datetime)

• rating 1 to 5 (default max = 5, default min = 1)

• optional:tags (keyword,rating)*

• optional:comments (string)

Tags would definitely be an easy thing to add to the Yahoo! format.  I would love to see some way to add User Review data back into the Yahoo! database, as well.  There are obviously some authentication and quality control issues with that. 

Anyhow, this is very cool.  Well done, guys.

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