Tim over at Winecast is debating the question of whether “wine 2.0″ sites like Scrugy are just for (wine) geeks. Naturally I’ve got an opinion (or two) on this.

First, like Tim, I must admit up front that I am something of a wine geek (link to my personal blog) and I’m absolutely a tech nut. Over the years as a software developer I’ve seen many technical trends on the Net come and go. Sure there are some concepts that go nowhere but you can pretty much count on nearly every effort contributing somehow to the evolution of the Internet. Some ideas contribute more than others but the overall application development ecosystem on the Internet will take it all in and bubble the best ideas to the top. My point in all this is that we are still very early in the lifecycle of the Internet and to claim that one type of application that is popular in one sector will never be successful in another (i.e. wine) is a tough call to make.  Are any of the web 2.0 sites focused on wine even a year old? Heck, most wine blogs are less than a year old too.

Another point that I’d like to make is that the first users of almost every new site are geeks. Let’s face it. We geeks are always online, checking out new sites and ideas the moment they’re unveiled. So of course the initial user base of a new crop of applications will have a heavy geek factor. Does this mean that these sites will ultimately fail to gain mass appeal? The challenge, as I see it, is for these sites to continue to evolve and mature, building upon a proven formula, until they hit on the right implementation. I think Cork’d is a great example of a young wine web 2.0 site that seems to appeal most to the non wine geek. In fact, I’ve heard several wine geeks say that Cork’d just doesn’t have enough of the techno wine geek features they’d like to see.

I hope we all can agree that wine related sites have a place online. Wine quality continues to improve around the world and good quality wine is easier than ever to find at lower price points. As wine continues to reach new heights of popularity, especially in the new world, wine newbies will naturally look online to feed their new interest. But what will they be looking for and how will they want to access information about wine? Buying wine online is a no-brainer. But how does someone new to wine get to the point of making a purchase decision? You’re lucky if a wine newbie can tell what they like and dislike in wine let alone naming a specific wine that they liked. I believe that this is where wine sites need to start. That is, easy, intuitive, and approachable access to information on wine. This is exactly what we’re trying to provide on Scrugy. Are we there yet? Probably not. Are moving in that direction? You bet!

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 8:52 am by james and is filed under Our Take. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.