microformats, rdf or microdata

Question

Is there any difference between using one of this technologies?

I\'m building now a site using HTML5, and I\'m having hard time to decide which one of them to use. I

Answer 1

November 2012:

Now that e-commerce schemas from the GoodRelations project have been integrated into schema.org, you have even more reasons to use microdata. (additionally to the ones @cygri has pointed out.)

Until now, GoodRelations and Schema.org were related, but separate vocabularies. With this integration, the bulk of the GoodRelations vocabulary is now available in schema.org.

For those who had been using RDFa to markup GoodRelations, the situation is unchanged. The developer of GoodRelations, Martin Hepp, said that "GoodRelations will remain an independent vocabulary, and usable in RDFa and other RDF syntaxes."

But most of the sites that have been using schema.org have been employing microdata, including e-commerce giants like WalMart, Overstock and eBay. For these sites, the type of e-commerce information that can be marked with microdata has been vastly extended.

So if you are starting from scratch, go with microdata. But If you are already using RDFa, there is no reason to change now.