Like the kitteh says…
…”I has a sad” every time i see a user with this on their profile page:
If you see these people, just go and friend them. They’ll immediately be enveloped into the warm soothing fold of snooth, they’ll see your reviews and forum posts trickling through their grapevine and it will help them get comfortable with the site.
Thanks, and just so ya know, I’m counting on you!
Tom Wark, over at Fermentation posted today over how people, usually wineries in his case, sometimes misuse the comments on his blog post to either get his attention or to sneakily collect a few back links to their own site. I’m still not sure if this is better or worse than real spam (of the cialis/viagra kind, although somehow snooth gets a lot of golf and scuba diving spam) as its done deliberately, by hand, whereas the average piece of spam is done via software code and the spammer realistically has no idea which sites they are posting comments to.
We see this on Snooth occasionally, a winery may create an account, then rush out and rate 5 or 10 of their own wines 5 snooth glasses.
In the short term these tactics probably work. Tom even, in a sardonic fashion, gave his spam commenter major exposure today by talking about them, and even posting their bottle label image (complete with naked woman), but over a longer term I think they are a bad idea:
1) the cost of being called out is greater than the benefit of gaming the system. To be totally accurate you need to factor in probabilities of each action, but even so I think its unwise.
2) in the same way that the captcha (type the words you see in this box to prove you are a human) trims out a lot of spam, we’re looking at ways to strip out bogus ratings. We already allow people to vote on reviews, and we’re getting closer to having a karma-esque rating for each user, which will help expose gamers.
I’m not saying wineries shouldnt comment on blogs, or review wines on Snooth, but making an effort to join in the online conversations that we are all having will be more rewarded than trying to hitch a free ride on everyone else’s work.
Two perfect examples:
> HondaJohn works in the tasting room of Loxton Vineyards, and reviewed one of their wines very favorably, however, he discloses that he knows the winemaker.
> Jeff Stai of Twisted Oak Winery, through his total immersion in blogging and the online wine community has generated an enviable amount of goodwill and press.
I cant wait to try wines from either of the se two wineries, when in other circumstances I’d probably have never even have heard of them.
Every site, company and business is constantly trying to differentiate itself, to stand out from the crowd and to build sufficient credibility with you, the consumer, so that they hold your attention. Then, over time, they hope to earn the right to build trust and credibility with you. If they manage to do that it becomes easy (well easier). In many businesses the cost of bringing you to the point of making that first sale is so great that companies lose money on the initial transaction. The company then hopes to make it up over time, via subscriptions, add ons and other optional extras, or just through plain old repeat purchases.
This isn’t about Snooth, but about wine retailers. Every day a store or winery asks me how they can build their online presence (I’ll actually address this in a future post), but I’m equally impressed when a store builds it the old fashioned way - offline.
Which brings me to NY Wine Co. I was invited to one of their wine tasting dinners last week. It was a night of Spanish food and wine (witness table crowded with wine glasses below).
The food was excellent and the wine’s original and artfully paired, but what really caught my attention was the relationship with the store’s staff and the guests; the atmosphere of the whole event. Everyone was so at ease, relaxed and comfortable, it was as if the people were having a dinner party in their own homes. Clearly, to many of the people, this was not their first time here.
In the heart of Manhattan, they’d somehow managed to create a micro neighborhood community. And thats something I’ve never seen before in this city. To the guests that night, NY Wine Co had done more than differentiate themselves, they had made themselves unique. And that might be the most powerful marketing message of all.
New York, NY - April 16, 2008
Users from over 40 countries now connected with local merchants and price information
Snooth, the world’s most comprehensive wine review site, today announced a substantial international expansion, making the site immediately relevant for wine drinkers worldwide. Following the complete integration of a worldwide merchant and price database, Snooth now connects users with wineries and wine merchants from over 40 countries thereby allowing wine drinkers to review and price wines featured on Snooth, and purchase wines in their domestic market through local merchants. This new information, provided in partnership with GlobalWineStocks.com, represents price data from 3,000 stores and 5,000 wineries, comprising a total of 2.4 million prices for over 200,000 wines from around the world.
For example, a user can search for “spicy cabernet” and view all wines that match this description. The user can then refine a search by price, vintage, region and other key attributes. Now, for the first time ever, global users can indicate their home country and receive local prices, in local currency, from local merchants, thus facilitating simpler purchases.
“With the integration of this worldwide merchant data, our site will become a powerful tool to a global audience,” said Philip James, CEO of Snooth. “Now, a user sitting in the Netherlands, for example, can search through the world’s largest collection of wine reviews and access local prices for that perfect bottle, all on the same site.”
James added that the data integration represents a significant milestone for the company, building towards the goal of “establishing a truly global wine resource, complete with social elements, detailed recommendations, editorial content, and seamless merchant connections.”
About Globalwinestocks.com:
Since 2005, Global Wine Stocks has aggregated wine prices from various online sources using proprietary technology. Available both as a standalone search engine and as a data license made available to partner sites like Snooth, the company offers millions of wine prices from global merchants, wine labels, and producers.
Please visit www.globalwinestocks.com for more information.
About Snooth:
Launched in June 2007, Snooth is a highly interactive, social database of the world’s wines, offering both casual and expert wine drinkers the ability to search, obtain personalized recommendations, interact with fellow wine lovers, as well as seamlessly buy from a global network of over 8,000 merchants.
Users have the ability to search by their own personal preferences (bold, peppery, fruity, etc), by a specific meal-pairing, price, or by region or producer. Snooth’s recommendation engine also provides customized selections based on stated preferences and user feedback. The more information a user gives on wines they enjoy, the more personalized and detailed the recommendations become.
Please visit www.snooth.com for more information.
media@snooth.com
(646) 723-4328
Monday was the Annual Dinner of the Wine Century Club. Led by Steve De Long, a Yankee currently residing in London, its a club for people adventurous enough to have tried 100 grape varieties. Its no mean feat when you get down to it, and requires some diligent note taking and exotic wines.
I’m member 200 and something, and only 3.5% of the downloaded applications ever make the cut.
I met some great people that night, including the wine blogger Kathy Lisson. I powered my way through a good few wines and rated all those I could on Snooth. Sadly, the 1896 port I tried is not in our database (yet?).
Everyone did a great job of bringing some less well known wines and I remember trying: Gruner Veltliner, Muscateller, Rkatsiteli as well as Hondarribi Zuri amongst others.
Give their test a try and see how many varietals you are at - its quite an eye opening experience seeing how few varietals dominate most of the wine we drink.
We’ve been very busy for over a month now integrating a veritable ton of data. This is our largest data integration to date and very soon we’ll be announcing it formally and a lot of the recent features will begin to fall into place; things like merchant select, for example.
The data is actually up and on our site, so those of you who read this can get a sneak peak at it before the announcement. As you can see from the image below, we have over 400,000 wines in stock worldwide.
And thats finally, truly worldwide - or at least 40+ countries from around the world.
We have, now, over 1 million wines in our database. Of course, that still includes a few duplicates (a few hundred thousand perhaps), but when measured against the wines that we’ve matched to each other its a small percentage. At this point, by my count we’ve matched well over 3 million records to one another - every external review, every store selling a particular wine, every record from a winery, each constitutes a separate record, and when you see a wine with 5 of those things on 1 page, that was once 5 records in files fed to us.
Keep your eyes open for the official release this week, and let us know how the new features and the data work out for you.
I’ve written a few times in the past about how large the Wine and Spirits market is in the US and the world, but I’ve tended to focus on the dollar value of the product sold. A recent report by the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America shows that in addition to being a $25 billion plus market in terms of wine sold, the Wine and Spirits industry contributes more than $137 billion to the US economy as a whole.
That comprises 1.1 million jobs and $71 billion in wages. First thing from that that’s clear is that the average wage is way above the national average. I wish I had some data on the distribution of the wages, as a simple average can be misleading, but its interesting nonetheless. The industry generates over $30 billion to the Federal and State and local governments.
If the ratio between the value of wine sold and the size of the wine and spirits market holds constant internationally, then worldwide we’re looking at a half trillion dollar market. In reality, I doubt the ratio would hold true as many countries have lower tax, lower wages and certainly less ‘friction’ in their distribution systems.