Last evening’s Wine 2.0 chat in Lingr was quite interesting and, to me at least, more productive than last month’s Second Life experience. Although we taxed the Lingr servers with almost 20 chatters at peak times, the venue worked well enough for us to better define what Wine 2.0 is all about. If you want to check out the discussion, the archive is available here.
Like a lot of technology geeks, I get easily distracted by the programming and site design of places like WineQ (very cool Ajax, guys), Cork’d (love the use of microformats), Vinorati (parlez-vous français?) or Scrugy (wow, every wine blog, forum, etc. in one place). But during the latest chat, Alan from the Ratcast and Crushpad made a couple points that are still banging around in my head today:
“I think user generated content will push its way into major pubs in 07 due to the demonstrated power of the communities we are growing online.”
“I love that you get wine filtered through cultural refernces from non-professionals who have a life outside of wine.”
So it’s not about the technology really, as El Jefe said during the chat, tech is the facilitator of more meaningful connections between consumers and producers. So if you boil Wine 2.0 down to it’s basics, it’s about communities of interest using the internet to share their passion for wine.
I’ll be rewriting the earlier minifesto over the holiday weekend to reflect these and other learnings from the session. Thanks to all who participated. Another meetup is planned for sometime in January, this time in Campfire. Details will be posted as they are finalized.
Tim,
Thanks for organizing this event. I wrote some thoughts and some bios for my community here: http://www.winemarketer.com/forums/showthread.php?p=497#post497
I too agree that the latest technology in Web 2.0, can only be developed in an environment that is developed around consumer interaction connected to specific consumer products.
Cheers!
Nice work Tim,
I didn’t get this out last night but I do think that UGC (user generated content) is the ducks nuts (the best) but feel it works best around a nucleus with a little pushing and prodding. I’m yet to read it but there’s a new book out about the 1% Rule, which states that about 1% of a site’s total number of visitors will create content for it. The 1 Percenters flout cultural conventions. Americans love rebels, therefore the 1 Percenters often become the influencers of American culture.
See “the show” with Ze Frnak at http://www.zefrank.com/theshow for an example. Or give me 1 month and i’ll show you what i mean 😉
Thanks so much for organizing and leading the meeting last night Tim. It was a pleasure to “meet” everyone. It’s great to have a place for these web 2.0 discussions focussed on wine!
I like Hugo’s description of user content “around a nucleus with a little pushing and prodding”. User generated content is compelling because it can be reflective of a larger population and so much more timely than much traditionally authoritative content. However adding stucture and unobtrusive editorial control can go a long way to improve the quality of such content.
I really need to read up more on microformats.
Thanks so much!
Lisa
Tim – Great job organizing. We’d love to be involved in the next meeting. Again I point out that community NEEDS to involve the wineries to realize the full potential of Wine 2.0.
Inertia – Powering the Wine Revolution
—Paul Mabray – CEO
Tim —
Like everyone said, thanks for organizing and moderating. I’m still a bit behind the curve about all the Wine 2.0 stuff, but it’s a fascinating discussion to observe.
I’m not sure where all of this is headed, but it looks like it will be a fascinating journey. I’m looking forward to the next discussion.
— Bill
Paul: Wineries have been involved in both discussions we’ve had so far (Jeff & Josh) and these sessions are open to as many other wineries who are interested in participating (or anyone else, for that matter).
Perhaps you could help spread the word of the next discussion on your blog. I appreciate your support, Paul.
hi Tim – adding my thanks! I think we are still in the “getting to know each other phase” which is good – eventually we’ll actually be able to work with each other!
I was reflecting on the tech aspects, and how little and how much it matters… Back in the 80’s (believe it or not!) I belonged to a group of food and wine enthusiasts that conversed via a simple email reflector called FOODWINE. Even back then we had all different levels of tech-savviness, but it was a great online social experience – we even had gatherings in different towns to share wine and food. I learned quite a lot from this group, but eventually had to check out when career and kids demanded more time. (And I just checked – this group still exists! I just re-upped 🙂
Now we have all of these “Wine/Web 2.0” avenues – blogs, forums, ecommerce, wine logging sites, recipe archives, and so forth. And as Tim said “…it’s about communities of interest using the internet to share their passion for wine.” But this has been happening already for 20 years now! So what’s different?
OK, I’ll tell you: data. Old days = a continuous threaded conversation stored in a pile of archives organized by month. Now = every type of communication (chat, notes, picture, rating, etc.) is indexed and can be searched and summarized. And tools are presented to the user to perform this “data mining.”
That’s what is happening on sites like WineQ and WineLog with their ratings and tasting notes and tags. And what I understand IBG is offering to wineries to help them understand their customer base better.
So yes – without community we have nothing – we have no data. But the new tools that are available AND THEIR EXPOSURE TO EVERY USER is what is truly significant and empowering!
(I’m going to repost this to the wine2.0 discussion list and you can throw rocks at me there 🙂
No rocks from my end, Jeff. I think you have hit on a subtle but powerful aspect of what makes things both different from past years and a very large opportunity for some of the Wine 2.0 sites. Tasting notes and discussion groups are great, but the real money will be made by connecting those groups with wine clubs and/or online stores. Shipping law changes enables almost a national market with no shelf space or accounts receivable issues for wineries (not to mention better margins on each sale). The consumer gets much larger selection and better recommendations. Wine 2.0 entrepreneurs have viable business models. It’s a real “win-win-win.”
Thanks, Jeff; great stuff!