The Web Should be Something Different
“The web should be something different.†This is a quote that I heard last week while listening to one of my favorite tech podcasts. The panel was talking about the Ze Frank phenomenon and how he was successful by being different. He knew that traditional media and traditional forms of communication need to be reinvented and redefined as we move towards the future. Web 2.0 is about giving people the power to express themselves in ways that have never been seen before. With this surge of power and technology, we’ve seen an avalanche of citizen journalists taking to the blog-o-sphere to report sometimes with good results and sometimes bad. In my opinion, the majority of these “journalists†are still mimicking the old print media that they at the same time shun as outdated and old. They mock the old guard, while at the same time, running columns that harken to the editorial pages of newspapers and magazines - a supposedly dying breed.
This is what I see in the wine blog-o-sphere, and while the exceptions are growing, there are still too many websites and blogs that have more in common with wine industry rags than with the new world of which they published in. The web is moving past the old idea of one page - one person, a place for each individual to erect their own personal billboard. Today, the web is interactive and powerful, helping to create a new pop culture phenomenon, while helping to destroy others. This is the new web, and the new web no longer needs to turn to print media for inspiration.
Thus, I turn back to wine and the idea of Wine 2.0. Is the wine industry moving to the future or are we trying to continually live in our old comfortable world of wine critic vs. winery - a struggle for the almighty “score� What Robert Parker did back when he issued the first scores in his magazine, the Wine Advocate, changed the way we look at wine today. For this, I am very grateful to him. He is someone I respect highly and continue to be inspired by, but it seems that his idea of scoring wines is something we’re afraid to give up. I understand this, but I don’t agree with it. The web is supposed to be something different, so why does the online world of wine seem to be so much of the same? Wine reviews with various types of points awarded – up to 5 stars, 20 points, 100pts, etc. - what we’re doing is miming the print media that we want to leave behind. Our bodega profiles and regional reviews have so much in common with the traditional stories that it appears that we’re kowtowing to the “rags†like Wine Spectator for which we shun; while at the same time, we are trying our best to be objective and separate from the influence of advertising and free wine samples.
The recent Wine Blog Awards hosted over at Fermentation felt to me more like an award for the blog most like the traditional wine rags than one rewarding new ways of communicating. While I do respect and actually read many of the winners and nominees, I do so in trade for the magazines I once bought. The only difference is that now the dust settles upon my laptop screen and not the piles of mags on my bottom shelf.
I sit here today trying to figure out what I want to see, what this new world should be, but I know we’re not there yet. I personally still practice much of what annoys me. Looking at other niches found on the web I wonder when will there be a DIGG for wines, or a Myspace for wine lovers? When will the winery have to enter the web, as opposed to just playing in it to see what happens? When will the wineries stop sending wines to Parker and Spectator to rate, and instead, start sending them, for instance, out to a group of bloggers who could do live online virtual tastings with other people. People who can join in a dialogue with both the winemaker and like minds about the merits of the wine and the stories that revolve around it rather than discussing only the mythical point value we feel we must place. Conversations are occurring online in groups that are larger than the entire online community of wine geeks, yet we are still talking about wine as though you need an education to enjoy it.
For me, wine is more than a beverage, and I know I’m not the average consumer, but I do know this. I used to sell wine for a living. In my store, the people that made me money were the not the uber-geeks, but rather the everyday wine drinker - the ones who made wine part of the meal, as fundamental as the salt and pepper sitting in the middle of the table. These are the people that we need to find a way to communicate with. Scores scare people and tasting notes terrify them, but conversation is what they embrace. They are afraid that they won’t find the same flavors you do when tasting a wine, but when you talk to them outside of scores and jargon, they open up and share ideas you’ve never thought about. Elitism is what is causing our youth not to turn to wine as they come of age, elitism bred by the wine rags over the past decades.
Results may very, but I think if we can engage the individual who is not part of the wine “cultâ€, we might see a new renaissance in the relation of Web 2.0 and of Wine 2.0. Wine standards have become stagnant and solidified and it’s time that we create a new renaissance of perception and communication, so that future can once again be redefined.
I don’t know what this new world is going to look like, maybe nothing will change at all. Who really knows? All I do know is that we need to change the way we approach the web when it comes to wine. We need to make wine something for everyone, and we need to make it a part of the web in a way that anyone can approach. Whether we redefine the tasting note, or we change the way we write about it, I know that the conversation can only lead to new ideas and new ideas are what move us ahead.
I don’t really know what the answers are yet, but I’ll continue to ask the questions. I would ask all of you to respond with your ideas and thoughts too. Join me in the forums and we can discuss if I’m crazy or if I might be onto something. I welcome the feedback.
Cheers,
Ryan Opaz
Addendum - I do realize that there are plenty of services out there trying to do something different. The main problem I have is that they attract wine geeks like flies, rather than the wine drinking public. Wine Life Today has a few active members, which I’ll continue to contribute to, but I really don’t know if it will take off in any meaningful way. Winelog, Cork’d and Bottlelog all seem well and good, though I really don’t see anything happening. Once again geeks and wine newbies flock to these but I can’t tell if anything more is happening or will happen in the future. Finally BB’s. We started one, and maybe one day someone will use it. If not, it remain in the vast world of unvisited wine BB’s. eRobertparker is the biggest BB, but with the level of discourse going on in there, you must be a recent trust fund recipient in order to begin tasting at that level. Parker wanted to follow in Ralph Nader’s shoes, and what we have on his board is an elite group of people, who while knowledgeable, are also not the reality.
Please prove me wrong. Send me examples of how we are changing the discourse. Podcasting? Video casting? Are they different or just vocal versions of the same old things? Believe me, I know that I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to miming the rags, but I think we need to stop asking if “this new rating scheme I came up with” is really something different or just another incarnation of the same old ideas. If you want to help break in the new forums while discussing this, please do.
Ryan Opaz - Visit their blogRyan is the Founder and Owner of Catavino.net He currently resides in Terrassa, Spain with his wife, and cat Txarli
Last 5 posts by Ryan
- Wine Bloggers - August 31st, 2007
- Still listening out there? - July 13th, 2007
- RSS questions, and random thoughts on the wine web - April 28th, 2007
- Meme Response from Erin at the Grape Juice Wine Blog - April 18th, 2007
- Regional Wine Toolbox's - April 13th, 2007
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:41 am
[…] data point came in my aggregator just yesterday with an impassioned plea for the wine blogosphere to be different from Ryan at Catavino. I agree and taken together have some ideas about the future of […]
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Ryan:
I love your post!
The challenge is … how do we go where the non-Geeks who could also come to see wine as an everyday part of their meal are (as in, “can someone put the salt, pepper, napkins, wine on the table?”)?
Not sure I have a good answer for this yet, but I think that instead of building sites and hoping someone will come (usually wine geeks already), we need to ask Where are the other folks congrgating (on-line and offline) and then go there to them.
April 9th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Thanks Richard, I hope that this site starts to address some of my questions.
As for an answer, I think it lies in the idea of not talking to non-winegeeks as though they are wine geeks. We think that people need to learn about wine to really enjoy it, rather than allowing them to enjoy it in their own way or style.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
[…] There are also some interesting articles about the 100-point system that, when I triangulated with a post Ryan did a few days back, gave me pause as I return to writing […]
April 11th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Great post, Ryan. Catching up on my reading, I discovered this and it poses a lot of questions for which we have no answers, yet, but I am confident we will get there if we continue to interrogate what we are doing and why we are doing it. Everyday wine culture is key–and the answer may come not from traditional wine writing, but for embracing the kind of passion that you find on food blogs and in food writing. The food blogs are so much more active–and more iconoclastic–than we wine bloggers!
April 11th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Wines are a beautiful Long Tail ( longtail.com ) . So many wines to drink and so many wineries to discover. However, traditional wine media is by default a bad filter for this because there’s no easy alternative. They are working has a fully controlled communication channel. Ultimately, it is noisy and unable to satisfy each consumers needs. We need tools that allow us, wine lovers, to set our filters.
Wines are the unique product that would greatly benefit from a more involved relationship between producer and consumer. For this to happen wine consumers should be able to choose their sources of information (something we are already doing when we search on google) and engage in a deeper conversation with the wineries (or other people) that we feel connected too.
April 11th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Nice thoughts Andre, though I would argue that most people just want a nice bottle of wine, and a good story. Or at least that was what they wanted when I sold wine to them. Most people are afraid of tasting notes, and scores and really just want to be told what to drink but in a fun way. The uber-geek, myself included have no problems finding new wines, or wines that I might like. Nor do the adventurous individuals with less knowledge.
The long tail is about the niches, and really with wine being a major niche it’s amazing how hard we make it to understand or how we make people believe there is a trick to enjoying it. You don’t need to know how to write a note, or dissect a wine to enjoy it, you just need to drink it.
My goal is to get more people drinking it. This can and will be done when we no longer make it hard to figure it out, and rather allow people to enjoy it any way they want to. Take away the mystique and bring forth the experience.
April 12th, 2007 at 7:43 am
The Web Should be Something Different…
Thoughts on why the mainstream is just repeating the same old same old of traditional wine rags….
April 12th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I understand your point. You’re talking about those people that want to drink wine but don’t want to invest the time that it is currently necessary to drink what you might like.
April 13th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Essayist Edward Abbey once wrote “today’s hip is tomorrow’s hype”. In other words, I’m sure we’ll get there, wherever “there” is.
The practitioners of Web 2.0 are setting the stage to be tomorrow’s leaders; to pave the way for others to follow, we just have to exercise patience. The people we lead will follow when they’re good and ready.
What we need to keep in mind is that people prefer simplicity. Ratings are simple. Most folks walking into a wine store may not want a story, they just want value. They see that value in two numbers: a rating and a price. If they buy it, try it, and like it, they might buy it again or, ideally, engage in dialog about it.
April 15th, 2007 at 9:00 am
[…] behavior happens again. Therefore, what I ask of you, the reader, is support. I need you to both challenge and support me as I try to complete the mission I have set before […]
April 20th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
[…] me, blogging is a form of communication that is creating an entirely new type of community where regardless of age, gender, race, etc, one’s knowledge, wisdom and personality is valued […]
June 20th, 2007 at 2:41 am
[…] Neither will I propose either the Vinography 10 point or UC Davis 20-point systems. Because, as Ryan said a while back, shouldn’t the web (and wine bloggers) be […]
February 14th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
[…] reviews in general and how I approach them in particular. In the back of my mind, I kept hearing Ryan’s call for wine writing on the internet to be different than the established print model. And for the first time, I confronted a vastly different review […]
February 14th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
[…] reviews in general and how I approach them in particular. In the back of my mind, I kept hearing Ryan’s call for wine writing on the internet to be different than the established print model. And for the first time, I confronted a vastly different review […]
June 9th, 2008 at 11:05 am
[…] out and looking at subjects not in the mainstream media? Is it worth our time to integrate more alternative approaches to wine blogging such as video, podcasting, photography, illustration, poetry and/or surveys? And finally, do wine […]
June 29th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Ryan, great post. I think so many readers here have hit many of the core issues spot on. Being a traditional marketing guy myself, I can appreciate the approach of the larger pubs out there trying to reach the masses.
The Future is Already Here
While reading your post, I kept thinking to myself, the future is already here. This is what Wine 2.0 is all about. You’ve successfully aggregated people around a central topic of interest, and managed to contribute something major: a relevant perspective, useful reference links, access to peers, an expert’s opinion on the topic of wine marketing.
Over Categorization Hell
One of the key things plaguing most wine marketing initiatives out there is overspecialization or overcategorization; trying to be everything to everybody. Grocery store shelves are a testament to this. This is why rating systems are needed, and places like Wine.com where the masses can cut through the clutter and make out with a decent value on a bottle purchase, and make it home in time to cook dinner and set the table. These mainstream solutions address a specific segment.
Segmenting Your Audience
I’m importing wine from Moldova, a place few people have even heard of. Do I try to go after the Safeway customer? Not directly. Will I try to compete with Wine.com’s value model? No. Each time I lift a Euro palette of old vintage wine into the air through Lufthansa Cargo, I’m adding value to the product. I’m getting it from the source to a place where there is none. Does the Wine.com shopper looking for a $20 bottle of wine care what it cost me to get the bottles here, no way. Neither does the busy Safeway shopper. So, who does give a hoot? A specialized segment does.
Broadening The Discussion Without Spreading Yourself Too Thin
Speaking to a specialized niche, leveraging Web 2.0 tactics, is what Wine 2.0 is all about. You’re doing it right now with this blog, except what you’re selling here is not your wine, rather your thought leadership. And, there are tons of people here “buying” it. To get some cash out of us, though, you’d need an integrated approach to nurturing (or jarring) us out of this active reader or passive blog lurker state, and into another level of a relationship. Conceivably, after reading a few more awesome posts like this, I think I would certainly have a higher propensity to click on one of your endorsed buy links (whether through an affiliate ad you’ve posted through AdSense, or a direct link to your store).
What’s the point? (or as marketing geeks would say, the Value Proposition)
The main point here is that with me, being at whatever stage of wine geekness I may be in, you’ve been relevant to me. Now what? Where do you (we) go from here? Is there a plan for how your next blog posting will lead us along somewhere? Is there a general path or plan for how your audience should ideally behave if they were to follow all your queues over time? I’ve recently started my own wine blog because my distribution is going online, having started as a brick and mortar business. The first couple of posts have been rather casual, starting with an audience the size of my closest friends, then slowly expanding the topic to something more relevant to a broader audience; i.e. those who travel to different countries and like to carry wine back home.
The future is here, so now what? The story is up to each of us to tell. We just need to stay out of the overcategorization or over specialization trap, unless we want to go toe to toe with the Safeways, Vinfolios, or Wine.coms.
Evodio Walle
Moldova Wine Club