Re: Returning to onlineAccount > OnlineAccount

I like the direction it is going.  Using existing schema.org types and
properties I'd extend what Jarno has sketched out in these respects:

- Extend the domain to include schema.org/Brand [1]
- Extend the supported properties to include:
    - schema.org/areaServed
    - schema.org/availableLanguage

These recommendations arise, in part, from inadequacies in Google's recent
method to declare social media profiles using either schema.org/Person or
schema.org/Organization in conjunction with the schema.org/sameAs property.
[2]

As discussed in [1], limiting the allowable domains to Person and
Organization cuts out a huge swath of Things that have social media
profiles (a type of online account).

Probably more importantly, even for the currently-supported Organization
type, there's no way or specifying languages or regions served by a given
URL declared with sameAs.  Obviously companies often have accounts intended
for a specific language and/or region, but not necessarily related to a
domain dedicated to that language and/or region, and still belonging to the
global organization.

For example, IBM has a Twitter account for France, in French:
https://twitter.com/ibm_france

But AFAIK there's no organization "IBM France".  Nor is there a separate
top-level domain or subdomain for French speakers in France accessing IBM
material, but only a folder-level web presence [3] - making it impossible
to unambiguously declare @ibm_france as "the Twitter account available in
French for IBM users in France" using the Google method.

areaServed and availableLanguage derive, not coincidentally, from
schema.org/ContactPoint; while not all types of accounts, or even online
accounts, can be thought of as a "contact point", that certainly *is* often
the case for social media accounts in corporate contexts.
schema.org/ProfilePage has also been discussed in this context:  there's
certainly aspects of this, too, that are relevant to an online account, but
comes up against limitations because this is really suitable for declaring
data about the account *profile*, rather than the online account itself.

[1]
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/structured-data/0Bqh_3avOZw
[2]
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/structured-data/customize/social-profiles
[3] http://www.ibm.com/fr/fr/


On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 1:59 PM, Jarno van Driel <jarnovandriel@gmail.com>
wrote:

> After some off-list debating with Thad Guidry, Aaron Bradley, and some
> other folks, I'd like to try to get (social/online)Account >
> (Social/Online)Account back on the table again.
>
> After reading most of the previous discussions about this topic, as well
> as taking FOAF into account, I'd like to suggest a new property, namely:
> onlineAccount
> domain: schema.org/Organization and schema.org/Person
> range: schema.org/OnlineAccount *(=new Type)* and URL
>
> onlineAccount > OnlineAccount:
>
> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Corporation">
>     <h2 itemprop="name">Acme</h2>
>     <ul>
>         <li itemprop="onlineAccount" itemscope itemtype="
> http://schema.org/OnlineAccount">
>             <a itemprop="url" href="https://plusbook.com/AcmeCorp
> ">PlusBook</a>
>             <link itemprop="provider" href="https://plusbook.com"> (which
> could also be markup that describes the entire organization)
>         </li>
>     </ul>
> </div>
>
> onlineAccount > URL:
>
> <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Corporation">
>     <h2 itemprop="name">Acme</h2>
>     <ul>
>         <li>
>             <a itemprop="onlineAccount" href="
> https://plusbook.com/AcmeCorp">PlusBook</a>
>         <li>
>     </ul>
> </div>
>
> I suggest naming the property 'onlineAccount' because of the added meaning
> of the adjective 'online'. If we'd use 'account' like FOAF does, IMHO the
> property name would be a bit too generic, eg: account > URL stil doesn't
> say much about what's to be expected at the given URL.
>
> As for OnlineAccount, again IMHO, this could perfectly well cover things
> like Github, Facebook, Pinterest, and what not more. But in case there's a
> desire for more specific types of Accounts than we can also consider adding
> schema.org/Account of which OnlineAccount would be a subClass, as well as
> any other possibly needed subclass.
>
> Lastly I suggest we use 'provider' to express the relationship between the
> OnlineAccount and it's service provider - FOAF's 'accountServiceHomepage'
> just seems like too much of a hassle to me.   ;)
>
> And as for the whole inverse property issue, since it looks like adding
> @itemprop-reverse to the microdata specs will take a while, I suggest we
> add an 'accountOf' property to schema.org/OnlineAccount, to work around
> that issue, eg:
>
> <div id="AccountOf" itemid="#AccountOf" itemscope itemtype="
> http://schema.org/Corporation">
>     <h2 itemprop="name">Acme</h2>
> </div>
>
> <ul>
>     <li itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/OnlineAccount">
>         <a itemprop="url" href="https://plusbook.com/AcmeCorp
> ">PlusBook</a>
>         <link itemprop="accountOf" href="#AccountOf>
>     </li>
> </ul>
>
> How does this sound?
>
> Oh, and any thoughts what OnlineAccount's (or Account for that matter)
> superClass should be?
>
>
>