Tag Archive - facebook

When online friends get real

March 7, 2008 in wine culture with 9 Comments

We’ve been here before, about 6 months ago, when Facebook rather exploded onto the scene (for me) and there seemed to be a collective & feverish drive to make new friends and contacts, discuss big ideas and make grand plans. It got so busy I spent ages on Facebook joining groups for Wine Bloggers, Wine 2.0, Sherry Lovers, Beards of the World United (that was just for me) and more.

The result was that I got to know a lot of new people and link up with some really interesting friends. We talked and talked and emailed and posted and … nothing really came of it.

Photo courtesy of Richard.HThe problem with Facebook is that it is a virtual “freshers fair”. It is like that first week at school/college/university, where all new arrivals feel equal and can shake off the social shackles accumulated over years at their previous school. These fresh faces desperately try to make a new circle of friends and create a new persona, meeting as many others as possible and “becoming friends”. Unfortunately it never stays that way, and by week 2 you will probably never see half those people again and you discover that the creepy guy who seemed seemed so mysterious is actually just creepy.

Facebook is good for showing your face (!) and getting snippets of information, even gathering into groups, but it does not offer the tools for in-depth discussions and planning. The serious business of making proper friendships doesn’t happen at the Freshers Fair, it happens later.

And that is what is happening right now.

At one time is seemed that all that time & effort seemed destined to be wasted, but thankfully I continued to have email conversations with Ryan and Gabriella Opaz at Catavino.net, and through them also began discussions with Joel Vincent of Wine Life Today.

This group is much more driven, and instead of just talking, we’ve started projects on the European Wine Bloggers Conference, the Open Wine Consortium and a few more things in the pipeline too exciting and confidential to mention just yet. These are some great tools for exploring and developing the Wine Conversation.

I have also met or am planning to meet up with several of these virtual friends, including Steve De Long, Emilio Saez, Jacob Gaffney as well as Ryan and Gabriella.

So, thanks Facebook for the party, I’ll be back again, but the place to hang out with friends is elsewhere.

* Photo Courtesy of Richard.H

The "its really about drinking wine" conference

January 17, 2008 in blogs, wine conversation with 3 Comments

OK, the cat is now out of the proverbial bag.

Ryan and Gabriella over at Catavino have just posted news of some discussions that have been going on for a few months about a Wine Bloggers’ Conference in Europe.

A few months ago a group for wine bloggers on facebook suddenly exploded with creative energy and all sorts of stuff was discussed. Conferences, dinners, tastings, “pimp my blog”, “am I sexy or not?” (OK maybe not the last one). But, just like most facebook groups, very little came of it, but at least the doors were opened.

One of the most interesting ideas was that Wine Bloggers should get together to share ideas, drink some wine, meet their peers and generally have a good time. Unfortunately we are not a rich bunch, and on top of that, there is a great difference between the state of blogging in the US and the rest of the world.

While our American cousins imagined exhibition stands, multi-track conferences, discussions on alternative platforms, revenue-generation, wine2.0, etc. those of us in Europe preferred to start with a dinner with lots of wine and friendly conversation, and maybe go from there (which I think is what is also now happening in the US).

Ryan, Gabriella and I took it upon ourselves to see that something would happen, however small, in Europe in 2008.

So, here we are. Do you blog? What are you doing the weekend of August 29-31, 2008?

Our plan is to gather in Rioja for that dinner, wine and conversation and maybe take the opportunity to visit this famous area and some of its wineries (in the interests of transparency and disclosure I would point out that I work for Dinastia Vivanco in the UK). Lots more details can be found here.

If you fancy joining us, or getting involved in any way, get in touch with me here or on Catavino.net. Although we will probably focus on European issues, this event is open to anyone who blogs about wine, however peripherally, and in whatever language.

Come and join us, it’ll be fun!

Bloggers in competition

September 12, 2007 in blogs, wine conversation with 12 Comments

Over on facebook, Richard Auffrey asks a pertinent question:

Are wine bloggers in competition with each other? If so, how does that affect our interaction?

As it happens, this links in to things I was considering myself. As I posted a few days ago, Wine 2.0 is about interaction, and this interaction creates (in my mind) … The Wine Conversation (see how I managed to link it back to my own subject?).

“The Wine Conversation” is about the many discussions that happen about wine because enjoying it is a common, shared experience. As the experience of wine increases in our country, hopefully so does the Conversation.

In this view of the world, bloggers are very much collaborators rather than competitors, involved in sharing information about wine and getting others involved. You can see this quite clearly in the facebook universe. Although very few, if any, of the wine bloggers have met, there is a very strong bond between them. Many have linked to each other, becoming “friends” in facebook terminology simply because of the shared interest in wine and blogging.

Before blogs, the only way to discuss wine was face-to-face, or by reading others’ words in magazines and books. The former is limited and quite daunting for some people, particularly those just learning to enjoy wine, while the latter is potentially very dry (excuse the pun), so generally reserved for the real enthusiast. How were everyday drinkers supposed to get involved with the Wine Conversation?

Blogging allows individuals to put forward their thoughts not as pronouncements (as per the magazines), but as points for discussion. Everyone can get involved as much or as little as they wish by reading, commenting, or even starting their own blog. This is the interaction that makes it different from what has come before, and bloggers are as much consumers of others’ blogs as they are publishers, so the Conversation metaphor is particularly apt.

By their nature blogs are limited in scope so we NEED more blogs and bloggers, and we need to read, share and converse on them, otherwise we either fall back on the old publishing models, or we become an irrelevance.

So what about the alternative view, that we might be in competition? What would bloggers be competing over?

  • Limited numbers of readers? I guess that the potential readership is unlimited for bloggers prepared to do something new (check out what Chateau Petrogasm are doing)
  • Limited advertising dollars? This is possible, but the vast majority of bloggers do not try and make money from the blogs, so this is currently irrelevant
  • Stories? Well, there might be some truth here, but in most cases this is not relevant to those blogging about wine as opposed to news
  • Ratings? On the contrary, as ratings are based on the numbers of links to your blog as much as readers, networking and cooperation are more important
  • Prizes? They do exist, but there aren’t many of these yet, and in theory they are based on quality rather than content, so getting help is a winning strategy

In short, wine bloggers have a shared goal and mission, to spread the love of wine and support the Wine Conversation in their country/region/business/community, and this is done by supporting others, linking to their sites, reading their stories, sharing views and, eventually, sitting down to drink a nice bottle of wine together.

Wine and facebook; all very two point oh

September 7, 2007 in blogs, wine conversation with 0 Comments

Web2.0, Wine2.0, Life2.0

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that just as anything and everything became eAnything, then iAnything, we now have Anything2.0.

The simplest way to make your product sound ‘hip and with-it’ (unlike that phrase) is to add that 2.0 at the end, but what does it really mean? Wine2.0 is something that is being quoted more and more often, especially by bloggers who see themselves as those leading the new revolution in wine. I have recently joined various groups of fellow wine bloggers on facebook, and this is one of the topics for discussion.

Well, actually it isn’t. It is apparently assumed we know what this all means, and this is what lets such developments down. If we don’t know what we are doing, how can we do it together?

Some of the leaders of this group, and organisers of an event actually entitled Wine2.0, have described the reasons for it as follows:

“We set Wine 2.0 up to draw a line in the sand that divided the first batch of wine companies founded during the dotcom boom (most died a horrible death, some several times over), from a new generation of entrepreneurs rejuvenated by their love of wine and the prospects of fresh, new and creative thinking.”

I find that uninspiring, as it would seem to boil down to “we are doing the same as before, just better”.

What is it that characterises truly “new” developments in wine, worthy of a “next generation” label such as Wine 2.0?

Interactivity.

Most of the past developments, even on the web, were really just new forms of retail. They may have included more information than before and new ways to select preferences (e.g. Virgin Wines as was), but essentially they did the same job as before the world wide web arrived in the wine world.

The real differences are emerging in the areas of wine blogs, community tasting note sites, interactive cellar management, and even collaborative wine making schemes.

The difference is the involvement of the consumer in many more aspects of the business of making, branding, tasting and selling wines. It is very difficult to actually make your own wine (well) so the vast majority of consumers have absolutely no understanding of this process. It is magic. As long as wine retains its mystique, this might be a positive thing, but it also helps to keep pressure on prices.

Now, anyone can read the thoughts and about the daily routines of winemakers on their blogs, and even ask them questions. There are videos to watch about viticulture and the harvest, sites to read, watch and share tasting notes, and even schemes to allow you to make your own wines. I suspect that this will transform wine in a much more fundamental manner than the wine trade currently expect; it is ever thus with revolutions.

The missing link is how to make this a seamless part of everyday life (not a chore), AND KEEP IT FUN. Also, any site that wants to build on trends and links needs to reach a critical mass, fast.

This is where facebook comes in. Whatever brings you to facebook (scrabble, finding old school friends, searching for a date, political activism, …) the power of the site is its ability to build communities from shared interests. If you want to find someone else who likes music by Imogen Heap, simply click on her name in your profile (I got over 500 matches in my London network). The Last.fm application even logs all the music I play and builds a “neighbourhood” of people that have similar tastes to me which I can share through facebook.

It is quite easy to see how this could, in theory, translate to wine. Wine has not got there yet, but it will. Those who establish themselves early are likely to become highly influential and it will be very interesting to watch it happen.

One tip, look out for a certain Mr Vaynerchuk as he is likely to be a player.

Next, some thoughts on how wine bloggers are using facebook.

What is a wine blogger?

August 28, 2007 in blogs, wine conversation with 8 Comments

I have been well and truly bitten by the facebook bug, and there are lots of things I still need to explore there. However, one of the groups I came across recently was brand new and it was specifically set up to gather together wine bloggers from around the world.

[If you are wine blogger, I encourage you to join us in the Wine Bloggers group as the more we gather, the greater expertise we access and the more we can do to build the profile of wine in the blogosphere.]

“Wine bloggers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your isolation.”
[hat-tip to Karl Marx]

One interesting result was that I have made contact with some very interesting bloggers I had not explored before. One of these is Ryan Opaz whose wine blog is catavino.net and focuses on Spanish and Portuguese wines. Ryan is also a budding community builder though and one of his sites is trying to define what we mean by a “wine blogger“.

Most wineries are, quite rightly, primarily focused on making great wines, so posting on the web does not feature highly in their daily routine. However, this is changing (I think of Pinotblogger for example), and trying to explain what it is we do and how we might be useful, and more importantly how it might help them, is not an easy thing.

Most wine bloggers are not trying to replace ‘proper’ journalists, but do we have an influence over what people buy or drink? I’d like to think so, but maybe others have a different view. Are we really only talking to ourselves?

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