I strongly disagree that it's boring and doesn't do anyone any favors. There are all sorts of domain-specific metadata that could serve as a platform for other

I strongly disagree that it's boring and doesn't do anyone any favors. There are all sorts of domain-specific metadata that could serve as a platform for other services. For example, Creative Commons licenses parse RDFa in referring documents to render copy-paste attribution information (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/RDFa#CC_Deeds_using_RDFa_and_Javascript http://wiki.creativecommons.org/RDFa#CC_Deeds_using_RDFa_and...). Standardized metadata can serve as a platform for other services, not just functionality in a browser. And the common sentiment that "we should use this because it might be better in the future" is a hurdle most standards go through at some point.