Tantek Çelik

TANTEK ÇELIK is dedicated to advancing open standards and simpler data formats for the Web. Tantek is one of the founders of both the nascent microformats.org open standards community and the Global Multimedia Protocols Group, and invited expert to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Cascading Style Sheets working group.

Tantek has played a key role in the development and popularization of practical social network portability technologies such as the hCard and XFN microformats. In 2003, Tantek collaborated with Eric Meyer and Matt Mullenweg in the invention of the XHTML Friends Network (XFN), which has since become the most popular decentralized social relationship format in the history of the Web. In 2004 Tantek proposed hCard for representing people and organizations, which has since similarly become the most popular user profile format on the Web. During his years as Technorati’s Chief Technologist, Tantek played an active role in refining and evangelizing hCard, bringing it from a wiki proposal to one that’s endorsed and supported by individuals, numerous small organizations, major companies ranging from AOL to Yahoo, and implemented for over a hundred million user identities and business listings on the Web.

Previously Tantek was a veteran representative to the W3C for Microsoft, where he also helped lead the development of the award-winning Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh, the first web browser to bring widespread, standards-compliant HTML4 + CSS1 + PNG1 support to millions of users. Tantek has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University, as well as a strong background in human interface and user-centered design from his many years at Apple Computer. He shares his thoughts at tantek.com.