Social Wine Online

Don’t spill any on your keyboard

By Josh LaRosee

So, it was only a matter of time before porn, shopping, dating, games, and free-billboard websites would be followed by the fruity-licious world of new winos in the realm of social websites. And, of course, being that we’re in the state of Web 2.0, content driven by the netizens themselves that morphs day-to-day, spilling new memes and insights into popular culture, consumers of The Juice have put her into the realm of social media.

At first glance, you might find it difficult to picture our hero, wine, fitting very well into the online world that is more often than not these days just a vomitous mass of comments, NSFW imagery, and cat videos. You’d be wrong, mostly. Currently less popular than the aforementioned cat vids, wine does make for interesting, ever-changing subject matter, albeit a bit more on the heady side of the cat box. The argument that wine online is “not working” would be somewhere in the fact that you have to actually taste the stuff to be able to take part in the conversation. And that’s the simple part. Then, you have to be able to recreate the often hard-to-describe experience in some grammatically correct fashion and hope that it exudes hints of insight and notes of experience. The entire process is a bit like homework, which we all know was only truly enjoyed by the kid who went on to be a Rhodes Scholar. But, it works! One need only to look at breakout successes such as Yelp.com and Rottentomatoes.com to see as much. People love to churn out tags and descriptions of their juice as fast as they can drink the stuff. What remains to be seen at this point is whether or not the now tiny niche of wine-online users can mature into a truly mainstream movement.

Some thoughts on experiencing wine online:

1.  “Do I know you?” – Wine social sites have jumped off into space, all the while looking to MySpace for inspiration. The standard user profile, friend lists, and various accounts of “recent activity” are the crux of how these websites work, but with the addition of ways to submit wine profiles and ratings. While the trend to integrate wine into the online social mix has quite a few tech-winos excited, much of how this integration is executed comes off as unfocused, an afterthought.

2. Just another pretty face. – A number of these sites do get some things right. For instance, Adegga.com uses suggestive technology (AJAX for you nerds) to offer up some ideas as you enter information of, say, a winery. Type in “colum” and it will show Columbia Crest as a choice for entry. Nothing really special here, but it’s the kind of interface design that make such sites easier, and hopefully more fun, to use. Winezap.com, on the other hand, isn’t so pretty to look at, but instead just lays it all out for you to see, for the most part in an easy-to-read manner.  Bottlenotes also takes the approach of employing clever interface design to keep the interest up for users, but at the heavy cost of time. Its interface is fun to use but somewhat cumbersome.

3.  Still can’t fine what I’m looking for. – In a world where search algorithms are becoming smarter to compensate for poor search strings and under developed methodologies, some of these sites are doing what appears to be the bare minimum when it comes to search results of data contained on their sites. When I type “red mountain” into the search box, what I expect to get as a return is all of the wines from the region, the wineries, winemakers, shops, restaurants, and the name of the guy who yields the water rights! It only takes me once to recognize that Google can do the job better than a specialized, data-driven, website.

4.    What’s the point? - The best way to connect over wine is to drink the stuff, preferably with friends and/or family. But for most hobbyists, taking the experience to the next level is often part of what investing the time and effort into a subject is all about. In the case of wine, honing one’s skills is experiencing, reflecting upon, and then, hopefully sharing one’s findings. Much of the software that we looked at this past month allows for a wino to do just that. Some, however, do not.

The Players:

Adegga.com – “Social wine discovery”
+Interface voodoo makes adding wines and producers simple and effective.
+One of the few sites that renders suggestions on various pages based on where you are in the site.
+A bit busy, but overall the design is clean and minimalist.
Pros: A site that has just about everything for a wine hobbyist, from cellar tracking to profile comments.
Cons: Primarily Euro-content. Not much for the Washington consumer.

Snooth.com – “Buy wine online”
+Google-esque home page means it’s simple to dive right into.
+A beautifully designed interface that, for the most part, is fun to use.
+Site broken out into three main sections: wines, social, and You
+Seemingly one of the most robust wine databases online as well as an active user base.
+All the comforting amenities of socials websites: profiles, interaction between friends, comments and pictures.
+Recommendations based on your own input.
Pros: Refined interface and vision, huge database of wines, large and active user base. Recommendations give the site a feeling that it’s working for you.
Cons: Not really any; the best wine site online.

OpenBottles.com – “We’re a social network for people like you”
+Very simple interface
+The addition of groups “about anything” is a nice reprieve from wine-only content.
+Simple system of reviewing, recommending, and responding seems to work very well, always leaving the user with something else to read or click on.
+User base appears to be small yet growing.
Pros: A clear vision of what wine can be about online. Easy to use and plenty to read and click through. Seemingly, an active user-base. Fun to use.
Cons: Quite a bit of place-holder content, yet to be reviewed and acted upon. Search functionality is underdeveloped, which could be a turnoff to many in an age where search and recommendation is everything.

wineCHATr.com – “A great place to connect over wine”
+Search seems broken: search for winery postings and get wine postings.
+Unconventional interface (pressing home does not take you to your own profile, it takes you to index).
+Many ways to interact: rate a wine, write a review (wine related business), general post, ask a question, post events.
+A heavy focus on B2C interaction with their Business Account, which is meant to help businesses connect with consumers.
+The developers get it right when they allow the aggregation of outside blog feeds (RSS) to be added to one’s profile. More and more site developers are learning that users are sick of having to be content developers over and over again. Write once, publish everywhere…
+Like most of the sites in this space, Winechatr does just about everything other social sites do, from leaving comments to creating groups. But, the scope of interaction with wine itself seems to be secondary.
Pros: Setup well for community interaction. All of the social site amenities that we’ve come to expect. Plenty of peripheral content to keep browsers entertained.
Cons: Overall design is disjointed and dated. At a glance, the focus is less on wine and more on networking, which could very well be a “pro,” depending on what your tastes are.

bottlenotes.com – “The culture of wine. Redefined.”
+Brand new, relaunched design that is ages beyond what it had before, which was hands-down the most dated site in the space.
+Unique profiler that’s fun to play with and spits back real-time recommendations, albeit it’s a bit clunky and slow.
+Setting up my profile was fun, and it yielded two pie charts that supposedly reflect one’s palate.
Pros: Custom wine clubs (predefined, such as Jetsetter’s Club and Israeli Wine Club) make for some interesting shipments.
Cons: No clear way to know what’s IN the wine club shipments at time of purchase.

Corkd.com
+Very simply and easy to use interface.
+Well, umm… not much to do on corkd.com except submit tasting notes.
+Great interface: the interface treats users as if they are somewhat new to wine yet does not insult the oenophiles.
+A heavy use of tags, which can be very helpful when browsing. However, because of the relatively static nature of wine profiles, tags end up just getting in the way.
+Ability to export data from your profile to a spreadsheet, plain text or xml, which is very slick.
+Overall, heavily lacking any real community interaction.
Pros: Large user base and extensive database of tasting notes makes the site pretty utilitarian compared to other social wine sites.
Cons: No new development on the site in some time.

bottletalk.com – “Share wine with friends”
+Clean, clear website.
+Desert island wines: the best of the best. A fun way to say, “this is what i would take with me to the grave.”
+The functionality of the site comes up short. For instance, once you discover that you can “share” your wine with your friends, you quickly realize you have no friends. Not a huge problem, but the site’s function leaves you to wonder just how you are to add friends to your list.
+No browsing of other users.
+Tag cloud to “browse” will turn some off completely, while others will be tickled to their specially-thinking little bones.
+Browsing wine is very difficult, especially because the search functionality is extremely weak.
-Tried searching “red mountain” and zero wines were yielded.
-Very little content.
Pros: A clean look and feel. Seemingly, a good way to create small groups of winos.
Cons: Functionality is lacking. Navigation could leave users frustrated with what to do next. Very little content.

WineZap.com - “Find, price and compare wines“
+Robust content, from vast database of wines to aggregate lists from other vendors to user profiles and user-powered reviews.
+Straightforward, useable, utilitarian, the cab franc/cinsaut of wine social sites.
Pros: Recognizable interface structure makes it easy to jump right into.
Cons: Often days between any significant user participation.

WineSocieties.com – “A Unique Online Marketplace“
+Sell and auction wines to retailers as a consumer.
+Auction or sell wine to wholesalers as a winery
+Patent Pending?
+There are some apparent usability issues that if addressed could really bring the site up to speed.
+After just over a year online, the site seems to have gained little traction with users and the marketplace.
Pros: Lots of potential for a tiny niche of active industry collectors to interact.
Cons: Very few users, even after a year online.

mustlovewine.com
+Taking the Facebook approach to design; robust yet minimalist.
+Over 4,700 members.
+All about interacting with people, not wine.
+All discussion groups… makes me wonder what’s the difference between using this site and creating a group on, say, Facebook?
+Home page lists all activity of entire site, every single person who has signed in, joined, become friends, etc. Superfluous and a bit annoying.
Pros: A good, ole fashion social networking site that’s easy to use… yay.
Cons: Nothing really sets this site apart from straight social networking sites other than the name and subject matter.