Re: Best schema to use for services

All that really needs to happen is that the description for Product just
needs a bit of help :

A Product is any tangible or intangible Thing that is made available for
sale—for example, a pair of shoes, a concert ticket, or a car. Commodity
services, like haircuts or plumbing repair, can also be represented using
this type, and where those services are typically broadly classified under
an intangible Product, rather than a tangible Product.


On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Jarno van Driel <jarno@quantumspork.nl>wrote:

> I don't really have issues with Product. So far I have been able to do
> just about everything with it that comes to mind. I do notice however that
> many people find the term 'Product' itself confusing. Especially for
> people/companies that don't sell physical items but sell a service.
> Questions like David Deering's aren't uncommon because the words 'Product'
> and 'Service' in the minds of many people don't mean the same thing and
> thus they get lost when deciding which Thing to use. That's why I came with
> the idea of maybe introducing a 'Service' item. And not because I feel
> Product is missing anything.
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 7:19 PM, Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 01:28:18PM +0200, Jarno van Driel wrote:
>> > Good question, I have been struggling with this as well.
>> >
>> > I use schema.org/ProfessionalService for generic service-businesses and
>> > than mark up the pages, about the services the company delivers, with
>> > schema.org/Product. Now I don't want to argue whether it's the ultimate
>> > method of accomplishing something like this, it's simply the way I do it
>> > because I'm not aware of any another method that does the job better.
>> > Probable there should be a way to mark up services as their own Thing
>> > instead of abusing schema.org/Product for this but for now there's
>> isn't a
>> > method/vocabulary which allows us to do so that I'm aware of.
>>
>> Hi Jarno:
>>
>> Given that the description of http://schema.org/Product includes
>> "Commodity services, like haircuts, can also be represented using this
>> type.", it seems that using Product to represent a service is a pretty
>> reasonable approach.
>>
>> I suppose Product has a number of properties that would generally not be
>> applicable to services, but the
>> ProfessionalService->makesOffer->Offer->itemOffered->Product
>> set of relationships makes sense (to me, at least). (Okay, "itemOffered"
>> is a more specific property name than one might have liked, but at this
>> point it is probably entrenched in the same way that the "seller"
>> property is).
>>
>> In any case: do you have any specific, actionable concerns that we can
>> discuss about using Product for services? Missing properties or the
>> like?
>>
>> Dan
>>
>
>


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