Thoughts

I have been reading quite a bit on social networking, and the latest trends in technology, such as Chris Anderson's Free, as well as dabbling a bit into wine appreciation, having seriously joined an amateur wine appreciation club (GO DGS!!!)

Somehow I have this notion that social networking and wine appreciation seems to be very "blue ocean", with very few applications available. The only one so far that I've seen is Average Joe Wine Reviews, which has an iPhone application (yes, i bought an iPhone! It's truly the greatest invention since sliced bread!) available for download for free.

However, the app isn't wonderful, is not the easiest thing in the world to use, with few wines in it, but the concept is good. Supposedly not everyone in the world is a connoisseur (I've googled the spelling of this until i'm blue in the face, so this must be correct!), but like everything on the web, it works best when there's plenty of people involved, and it just needs 1% of the people using the application to contribute for it to be wildly successful.

If I were to design an iPhone Wine Review application, I will adhere to the following principles:
1) The app needs to be free. This is completely necessary to break the barrier and achieve the critical mass needed for success. As written in Free, the greatest barrier lies between free and a penny. Even the payment of a single penny forces the psyche to re-assess the usefulness of such an application, and 99% of the population will just turn away.

Thus, the app has to be free.

2) Contributors must feel that they are doing it for themselves, and not for the "betterment of society". There is no such thing as altruism, and the best way for things to succeed is by the "invisible hand", where everyone, doing everything for their own benefit, achieves something greater than the best centrally controlled activity. Like Youtube, it succeeded not because contributors want to share their videos with the world. Rather, it is because the contributors are looking for a place to store their videos online. When the users' and the applications goals are aligned, it will have the best outcome.

Thus, the app must begin with the user as the focal point, that the purpose of the app is for the users to record down the wines he has tasted, so that he can keep for future reference when purchasing wines (as well as allowing others to review the wines he has contributed). There may or may not be a reputation system, depending on the quality of reviews provided.

3) It must be really for the average user. Average Joe Wine Review basically fails in this respect. So even if the wines were not assessed by greats like Robert Parker, they are still contributed by users who obviously are in the wine Community of Practice, with jargon that is quite frightening to obvious newbies. I feel that wine, even though it is increasing in acceptance worldwide, still remains a sort of hit-and-run effort by most, who wants to know more about the wines before they obviously drink it, but has no idea of the terms and technical phrases used by wine reviewers. This excerpt from ezinearticles.com says it all:

Wine is often viewed as a snobby hobby. This is often due to the nature of the terms used. When a person says the “aromatic balance” is serene, one can’t help but be a bit intimidated.

I trip over how the terms "bouquet" and "nose" are used, not to mention the myriad of terms I have completely forgotten.

I feel for Social Media and Wine Appreciation to mesh together, the fear / intimidation factor must be addressed. Wines must be brought down to the masses, and that means that costs must be lowered, one should not be worried whether he's appreciating the wine correctly or not, and that he should not feel that there is an enclosed community that he cannot enter.

Coming back to point 3, one cannot control how contributors review their wines, but one can use technology to aid the uninitiated.

Thus my app will have common wine jargon automatically hyperlinked to explanations. There should be sections describing grape varietals, and concepts such as Vintage, food pairings, et al.

4) Searching for wine reviews must be easy. That means being having a good search engine and suggested searches, and searching by categories. An even more powerful method would be to use the in-built camera, snap the label and search, thereby reducing entry time even more. I usually find myself wanting to know what the wine reviews say when i'm actually at the wine shop looking, rather than before. There are just too many wines to research BEFORE going to a wine shop. Much easier to hunt and review at the same time.

5) Push information. Wine tasters also want to be kept abreast of the latest news in wine. In every city, there's ALWAYS wine tastings and competitions and what-nots happening, and the usual methods of EDMs (Electronic Direct Marketing) can only reach so many people. Wine shops can use this iPhone to push wine information (sales, wine tastings) to users within the vicinity. Of course, too much information will just result in spam, so one needs to control the flow, perhaps by scarcity creation (i.e. only 1 push notification per day to the highest bidder).

6) Revenue generation. The toughest of the toughest. Without a proper income source, this application will quickly die off due to poor maintenance and quality. I will adopt the Freemium method, where there will be the free ad-supported basic feature application, as well as the paid premium version, clean of ads and with more features. Push information (i.e. advertising on a premium spot) will produce more revenue, but these ads need to be controlled lest it chases away users.

Another greater revenue generation will be analyzing users inputs, from their searches and reviews, to provide wine makers immediate access and contact with the people drinking their wines, and to give them an idea where the hotspots of demands for their wines are, so that they can distribute their wines accordingly. Just as Google earns from selling analysed user information, this will also form a large revenue stream that will continue to enable the application to be free.


The more I write, the more I am convinced that I want to develop a Facebook for Wine, i.e. WineBook! I want to set up a self-sustaining community focused on wines and sharing their love of wines to everyone.

Do you think it will work?