June 3 2007
On the heels of the Wine 2.0 event last week (see Tom from Fermentation’s review post here), I have to say that I’m surprised (real surprised) when I also read last week:
In a recent study by Internet Retailer Magazine, Wine.com was ranked the #1 online wine store for the third consecutive year. The company ranked #13 in the food and drug category and #199 among all online retailers, based on 2006 annual web revenues.
“We just completed a survey of nearly 1,400 of our customers, and 96% said they’d recommend us to a friend,” said Mike Osborn, Wine.com Founder and VP of Merchandising. “That’s the most important metric to us, and that’s the reason we’re among the top 200 largest web retailers in the country.”
Wine.com is the #1 online wine retailer for the 3rd year in a row!? All of their customers are happy to refer Wine.com to a friend!? Interesting factoids for sure and here’s the rub: Wine.com exhibits zero, zip, zilch in the way of Web 2.0 technologies—no blog, no community, no RSS feeds, no nothing. Half-baked user reviews provide marginal value and limited interactivity. While perfectly contemporary as far as online commerce goes these days, Wine.com certainly hasn’t moved the needle in progressiveness and could just as easily be a site circa year 2000.
Unfortunately, when contemplating this lack of progressiveness through the filter of wine technologists, bloggers and such, this news of Wine.com being the leading retailer should really give anybody in our little jet stream reason for pause.
Why? Because while we’re busy sniffing our own exhaust thinking about how we’re changing the wine world while Twittering our tasting notes from a comfy spot at a wine bar, the reality is that outside of our own convergence of technology wherewithal coupled with wine passion, there’s still heaps of people that just buy wine online and don’t do anything else. This group of people is significantly smaller, it should be noted, than people that just simply buy wine at the store and don’t do anything online short of checking email.
Read Tom’s excerpt from the above mentioned post. Then, re-read it:
I think my only real interesting contribution to the second panel, of which I was a part, was pointing out that the wine 2.0 phenomenon may be no more complex than a new set of technologies by which wineries communicate their story and product line to consumers, something they’ve been doing with some success with different technology long before the Internet. This would be the less reverent view of the wine 2.0 phenomenon. The most reverent view of this thing we celebrated on Friday would be the view that Online Social networking around wine will change the way all Americans understand the beverage and lead to a startling democratization of the beverage that will lead laggards to the party in the dust.
Tom makes a very, very critical and important point. While he doesn’t mine the gap between his open-ended question about Wine 2.0 potentially being no more complex than a new set of technologies for wineries to communicate and a larger view of Wine 2.0 being a social networking revolution, certainly Wine.com makes the current point for him.
In order for Wine 2.0 to mean anything beyond “point” solutions and one-off customer communities, no more advanced then bulletin boards, one of the pillars from the very earliest stages of the Internet, somebody has to build a bridge to sustainable, leading, cutting-edge wine commerce. Somebody has to knock Wine.com off their perch.
I hope we rise to the occasion.
Good Grape Update 06/06/07: My previous assertion that Wine.com doesn’t follow Web 2.0 practices wasn’t entirely correct. A couple of good folks from Wine.com have updated me and they do offer RSS Feeds. I always fact-check myself to make sure these sorts of corrections aren’t necessary, but in this case they are right. Thanks, as well, to the guys from Wine.com for being gracious about their mention.
Posted in, Around the Wine Blogosphere. Permalink | Comments (14) |
I agree with Vini that someone needs to use Wine 2.0 principles to sell more wine and build online communities in order for this concept to be considered a “success” but I would disagree that Winelibrary/Cork’d is a micro-demographic. What Gary is doing on those sites is the most interesting development I’ve seen since I started writing about Wine 2.0 nine months ago. If anyone gives Wine.com a run for their money it will be Gary & Co.; and maybe Jeff’s employer, too.
“but I would disagree that Winelibrary/Cork’d is a micro-demographic”
Should be easy to prove shouldn’t it? How many views to WL’s Vblogs get? More importantly, how many of those materialize as sales?
Case in point, I’ve bought from Gary before, but I bought because he had the wine I wanted at a great price. However, I’ve never bought anything reviewed on his Vblogs (although I think they’re entertaining).
V
As a fellow podcaster, I would estimate Gary’s audience for his vlog is between 15-20k per episode and from what I understand Cork’d has something north of 20k accounts so this would be a pretty good start at figuring his total reach. Right now, pretty micro, but going forward I can see him breaking out to Wine.com kind of numbers.
In the context of the wine industry, it’s a drop in the bucket, but as a share of the online wine market, I think it is rapidly approaching significance.
Well, I have an open-ended willy-nilly opinion on this.
#1) I think Tom’s original posit is probably accurate. Social networking, while the flavor du jour, is really just an enhancement of the bulletin boards that have been around since the wilderness days of the Internet.
My larger notion is that Wine.com doesn’t incorporate any prevailing technologies—and I’d certainly call RSS feeds something that has crossed the transom to being a capability that will stick around.
Maybe Gary V is the guy that will unseat Wine.com, and if he is, I’ll be cheering for him. I guess I’m somewhat dubious that it’ll be the Cork’d/Wine 2.0 piece of it that will get him there, though.
And, as a second thought, having that success come out of a legitimate retail presence certainly says something about Wine 2.0 in general and might actually create more questions than anything.
3 years from now, I don’t want to be accused of being a kool-aid drinking clone, but I do believe in RSS feeds, and I do believe in communities and I do believe in blogging. I’m just uncertain how this is going to converge to create the next generation of online wine business.
I tend to agree. Wine 2.0 will give Wine.com and the wholesalers a run for their money, but I think the next great opportunity for online community that incorporates wine is what food.yahoo.com and http://www.foodnetwork.com are trying to do. For the masses, wine is a social liquid, but it is also just a smaller component of the more encompassing idea of cuisine. Maybe the Wine 2.0 movement can’t quite see that because their primary focus is selling more wine, while bringing people together and community is secondary and just a means to sell more.
Hey what’s all this about “knocking wine.com off its perch?” What perch? We’re tiny! Please don’t talk about us like we’re Microsoft! 
We’re passionate about wine too, and also passionate about learning what our customers want and working hard every day to give it to them.
I think all the community stuff you guys are talking about is great. Wine is social and the web is going social, so wine on the web is a natural to be social.
For the Internet to really have an impact on wine, don’t forget all the other pieces customers care about. Reliable and convenient access to all the great wines the community is talking about. Low cost, fast delivery. Customer service.
Did you know Illinois is trying to outlaw shipments from out-of-state retailers? If we’re going to knock someone off their perch, let’s focus on someone who’s standing in the way of what customers want, like the state shipping laws!
Cheers!
Wine 2.0, internet marketing, direct shipping…this is all very important stuff. The bottom line is that this is all going to work, however, only when the small and emerging companies work together for the common good of what you are trying to create.
I have been a supplier, created a wine wholesaler, and now have an import company, and I see a huge need in the market. Some wholesalers represent over 500 suppliers of wine. How in God’s name are they going to get their wines in the hands of the retailers and consumers. Not going to happen…at least not under the current set up.
The internet is the only answer. Joining forces is the only answer. South Africa is trying to crack into the US market with only marginal success. It’s because they are really not pooling their resources to make it happen. Napa Wineries all seem to work together to promote Napa and they all win.
I hope that everyone in Wine 2.0 takes a look at the big and long term picture. By 2015 there will be a 2.5 tier system in the USA…not a 3 tier system. This will be good for everyone in the Wine 2.0 community as long as you have the long term vision. I know their are a lot of very talented people involved that are trying to figure it out and this is a good thing.
Gents,
Ah. I love the Internet! Wine.com on the site in about a day after the post was put up.
I wasn’t taking a shot at Wine.com, I really have no differences at all with the site. Since you’re here, though, Rich, can you elaborate on any strategic decisions or non decisions related to Wine.com not embracing Web 2.0 fundamentals like RSS feeds or blogging? That was my big picture point.
Thanks for stopping by,
One note about RSS, wine.com does have RSS.
Every product listing page has a “Subscribe to feed button”. Therefore, you can drill down to a particular product category, and you have an instant wine alert feed.
For example, I like Italian Reds. I drill into Red, Italy. Set a price range. Now I click subscribe in the top right corner. I have my own wine list, so when wine.com adds inventory to category, I am updated.
http://www.wine.com/v6/rss/rss.aspx?N=7155+12+105+124&Ns=p_Date_Added|1
We have also been publishing feeds for a few years; most users see the Live Bookmark Icon in Firefox and IE 7.
We have added many features in the last few months.
Some that will become the core of our community.
Also, checkout our new advanced wine search. It’s evolving so please send us some feedback. http://www.wine.com/v6/search/advancedsearch.aspx
hi Jeff - In some ways, this may be your most important post.
I made a post on the wine2.0 site about channels. I didn’t have the time to put as much effort into that post as I would have liked, but the point I tried to make was that channels to your potential customers are key. Ten channels are better than five!
If I can reach a potential customer via a forum, Twitter, or my blog - I will try to do that - AND - I will do so just as if I was trying to reach that person in my tasting room.
And that IS the key (and what I failed to express in my wine 2.0 post): no matter what the channel is, you have to project something interesting and fun through that channel. Content still is, and will always be, king.
And that is why Gary V. is a success, because he does something interesting through a new channel. And we love it, because it is INTERESTING.
(BTW, I have bought wine based on a WLTV episode. The wine sounded interesting, Gary made it fun, and I’m glad I bought it. It wasn’t the channel itself, it was Gary that made it so!)
Hi Jeff,
We’ve had RSS for a while as well as other ways to encourage sharing like send-a-friend, bookmarking & reviews. All part of giving users what they need to make easy, informed choices. More coming in the months ahead.
Rich
Thanks for the dialogue, everybody!
Okay, I stand corrected. I updated the actual post, too. I’m not sure what I was thinking because, as has been pointed out, RSS feeds are on almost every page of the Wine.com site.
The overall jist of the post wasn’t an indictment on Wine.com, it more more centered on the fact that wine bloggers and those in and around the self-dubbed Wine 2.0 industry klatch have some work to do—particularly because Wine.com isn’t a part of this community and they are the #1 Wine commerce site on the Internet.
It’s merely an observation and the divergence of our enthusiasm for wine and wine commerce juxtaposed against Wine.com, the #1 players lack of real engagement in this online sub-set of the wine industry and consuming public(RSS feeds or not).
That said, if Geoff or Rich from Wine.com want to get into the Wine blogging jet stream this is as good a spot as any.
Thanks for stopping by and please come back. if you want to do a guest contribution post on the future of Wine.com, addressed to consumers and the wine blogging community, I will give you the platform.
Thanks much,
Jeff
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Wine.com will launch more social features in the months ahead. But maybe we should work together if we want to really maximize the impact of the Internet on the wine world. Bloggers & social networking “Wine 2.0” sites can link to Wine.com when your users are passionate about a wine and we’ll pay a commission on any sales generated. We each do what we do best. Combine the social content with the ability to deliver the goods so the community members get to do what we all like most—enjoy great wine!
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Call me a heretic if you will, but why is important for Wine.com to embrace Wine 2.0? There are probably about 5,000 people in the world who even know what Wine 2.0 even refers to. Seems like they should let WineTV et.al. have this micro-demographic and keep doing what they do well, sell wine.
Until an online player uses Wine 2.0 concepts to make something signficant happen, its just a concept, albeit an interesting one, but ultimately it may be of no more significance than the sock puppet from pets.com.
I hope I’m wrong, but I think wine will continue to be driven by a personal touch that blogging, email, vblogs, etc just can’t replace. Enhance, maybe, but not replace.
Cheers,
V