Wine sites cash in on Facebook phenomenon August 14, 2007
Maggie Rosen, and Oliver Styles
A new online wine service hopes to become the world's busiest cyber wine recommendations site by cashing in on the Facebook phenomenon.
New York-based Snooth, which launched in June, provides searchable wine recommendations from users and critics with a database of two million reviews.
Its revenue comes from commissions on wine sold through affiliated merchants and wineries across the US. The company says it plans to expand abroad.
'The more users we attract through Facebook and in general, the more specific the recommendations, and the more valuable the database becomes,' said Snooth founder Philip James.
Snooth is not the only system to use the three year-old social networking site. An application called Wine Beagles offers a similar service but so far provides purely amateur reviews posted by Facebook members. Its members so far have rated over 18,000 wines, from 1955 Gould-Campbell port to 2006 Yellowtail Shiraz.
Although tasting notes on these applications include, 'this was beautiful, as usual' for a bottle 1998 Lafite Rotschild, or just a blank entry with 5/5 for a bottle of 2000 Chateau Smith Haut Lafite, the hosts of these new sites are in little doubt of the value of being on Facebook.
'Since we launched on Facebook 10 days ago we've signed up 500 new members,' said James. 'The Facebook platform offers tremendous potential.'
Since it started in 2004, Facebook has become a global internet phenomenon, with over 20m users worldwide who share photos and personal news, play games and shop online. It currently ranks among the top 15 most-visited websites worldwide.
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God help wine "literacy" and professionalism, that's all I can say (and keep up the generally good work of defending and embodying them, Decanter!). But for me the really mystifying thing here is that, in a world where even most professional wine writers appear to be self-proclaimed and to have few or no formal qualifications or training for the job (with the exception perhaps of those who write for Decanter Magazine?), who on earth could possibly CARE what rank amateurs Joe Bloggs and Co. from Iowa City to Newbold-on-Stour (and thousands of points in between and beyond) have to say about this or that wine? "Cash in" says it all...
Gregory Sims, Berlin, Germany
Ouch, poor Joe Bloggs – what did he do to endure such wrath? Being an open site we receive reviews of all qualities, from this well written one, received just a few minutes ago (inky jet black wine with plentiful astringent tannins, this wine is actually somewhat rustic with the fruit coming second to the taste of barrique and thick-skinned tannins) to this basic one (tastes great!). The former should be useful to most everyone, the latter maybe less so directly, however, when you combine even the most basic reviews with our 'nearest neighbour' feature, which matches you up with other users who share the same tastes as your own, even the most basic review becomes relevant.
Real power then comes from aggregating these reviews together. It's what Zagat did with restaurant reviews. Sure, there will always be a place for the Michelin Guide, but for others, the community generated Zagat does just fine. Philip James, Snooth Inc, New York
I'm not sure which 'self-proclaimed' writers you're referring to but for me a diversity of voices is an essential component of any useful critical community. For too long wine has remained a boys club which is intimidating and frequently pretentious. Food has been revolutionised in the UK by increasing accessibility and I see no reason why the same cannot be achieved in wine. Decanter does a fine job of maintaining quality critical opinion and educating it's readers but I am equally likely to take a recommendation from a poster whose taste I share on a wine bulletin board, than I am from the pages of the magazine. Taste will always be a subjective affair and therefore should never be the exclusive domain of any critical community.James Poletti,
FRUKT, London
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God help wine "literacy" and professionalism, that's all I can say (and keep up the generally good work of defending and embodying them, Decanter!). But for me the really mystifying thing here is that, in a world where even most professional wine writers appear to be self-proclaimed and to have few or no formal qualifications or training for the job (with the exception perhaps of those who write for Decanter Magazine?), who on earth could possibly CARE what rank amateurs Joe Bloggs and Co. from Iowa City to Newbold-on-Stour (and thousands of points in between and beyond) have to say about this or that wine? "Cash in" says it all...
