Business cards are part of the business culture. The business cards are advertisements, reminders of possible business contacts and a way to show others you are open for business. Business cards are in certain size, but the style may wary. E-Mail signatures, e-cards and similar are known formats online, but no standard has been set for an online business card. That may be about to change.

Microformats are a set of simple data formats built on top of existing and widely adopted standards. The microformats are of similar nature as XML markup. One such is the hCard that works in the similar way as the business card we know. hCard is exchangeable between computers and business entities in a format that can be read by client Web software or browsers.

More information on Microformats and the hCard is available on the microformats.org Web site.