Timely Updates

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

We’re constantly on the look-out for new ways to work with the Snooth database. One of my favorite types of update can be applied to every wine, changing the way we display it or giving you more detailed information given what we know about it. This week I’m excited to announce one such update. On the detail page of a wine, for example the Pouilly-Fuissé Labouré-Roi 2006, you can now see a suggested drinking window. A lot of folks write to us and ask questions about when to drink a specific wine they either have or want to buy. What worried us were all of the people who had the same question but who didn’t write to ask! We still wanted to help, and now we can.

Another great update for this week attaches some new functionality to the Social page. When you’re logged in, we’ll now present you with a list of groups you might find interesting. Here you can see I’ve reviewed a number of wines from Trefethen Family Vineyards (after a Snooth visit to the winery). Also I seem to have reviewed a good number of wines from Napa but I haven’t followed that group yet. That’s an oversight I’ve now corrected!

Social Groups

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

We’ve got a great set of updates for you this week. In fact, Snooth HQ is buzzing over them. Let’s get right in there.

A couple of weeks ago we launched the first of our “What’s Happening?” pages. These pages are designed to uncork everything that’s going on inside the Snooth bottle. Snoothers like you around the globe are reviewing wines, searching, adding details and winemaker’s notes, images, and talking to each other. This last point is what we’re after now.

We constantly talk about how social wine is. The new social page is full of information about who’s on Snooth, including a Discover section similar to that on the wine page, highlighting active wineries and regions, great reviews for you to read, popular grape varieties, and, pictured below, some of the great wine review writers on Snooth.

Another exciting benefit of the social page is a friend recommender. Snooth will show you other users who are similar to you — and why! Here you’ll see three Snooth users living in my area. If I friend them, I can see on my Grapevine what they’re drinking, share wines with them, see which groups they’re following, what they’re talking about on the forum, and more. This is a great and powerful way to expand your Snooth tasting network, meet new people, and drink better wine!

One of the things that’s so great about Snooth groups is that you can see very clearly what’s similar about all of the wines in a group. Whether it’s by varietal, region, or the producer all of the wines have something in common. But what if the only thing that the wines have in common is that they were all served at the same dinner party, or enjoyed with a favorite friend. That’s such an important part of wine and just how social it is.

Well, now you can group your wines together any way you like. Really. Let’s take a quick example. As some of you know, every Friday Snooth HQ pops a bottle or two of wine — a great end to the week and one of our beloved traditions. I want to bring those wines together. As I’m writing my review (the best way for me to remember what I’ve liked in the past), I can tag the wine however I like. A few wine Fridays ago we were fortunate enough to share the Barolo Riserva Bricco Boschis San Giuseppe Cavallotto 1999. When I’m adding my review, I can quickly tag wines with something memorable. As the screenshot shows, I’ve tagged this wine with “Snooth Wine Friday”.

Now, this is the exciting part. A group is created for that tag, and in a few short minutes the newly tagged wine will find its groups. Check out the Snooth Wine Friday group in action!

Now I can send the group page to all of my friends — they can quickly see which wines we’ve been drinking, what we loved, quickly click to search for those wines, and seamlessly buy a bottle. And if I’m having a bit of trouble remembering what we were drinking a few months back, it’s only a few clicks away from My Groups.

Snooth Mobile

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

No, we’re not making a tricked out Snooth car. (But there’s an idea…)

We are, however, even more portable than before. When we launched the iPhone site a few weeks back, a few of you with Blackberrys and other mobile devices told us you wanted to use Snooth on the go as well. The best way for us to help is to go back to basics. No Javascript, no fancy colors or images.

Simplify, simplify, simplify until there’s nothing left but the core functionality. And finally, Snooth is just the right size to fit on any device.

Want to take a look? Visit the Snooth mobile site now!