Re: currentModel attribute for /Product

I've received direct feedback from several individuals on the Product item proposal. After vetting several options, The most elegant solution for reducing the complexity of requiring metadata updates to already published pages, is to introduce two new fields to 'Product':

•             releaseDate - the product release date
•             productFamilyID - unique product family identifier reused across product versions. For example: <meta itemprop='productFamilyID' content='123-456-789'/>.

This enables the scenario of a user searching for information about a product (without specifying a version), and enabling the search engine to favor results for the most recent product material.

Example:
                *Legacy Product Content*
                Product = Windows Mobile 6.5
                Model = 6.5
                releaseDate=10/6/2009
                productFamilyID=123-456-789


                *Newer Product Content*
                Product = Windows Phone 7
                Model =7
                releaseDate=10/21/2010
                productFamilyID=123-456-789

The example above shows how  multiple products can be associated by a ProductFamilyID, so that anyone seeking “mobile sdk for Windows” can be offered content that applies to the latest technology first.

If there are no objections, I'd like to revise the original proposal for adding 'currentModel' to product, and replace it with this solution of adding 'releaseDate' and 'productFamilyID' to the Product item.

-Kenley