ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? GARY ASKED
By DANIEL J. BERGER from the Winefuture-Rioja ’09 conference in Logroño, Nov. 12
It is the question that the Belarus born Internet wunderkind and creator-owner of The Wine Library website, Gary Vaynerchuk (pictures above from the NYT), asked an audience of around 1,000 wine professionals, gathered in the middle of La Rioja to hear well-known speakers on a wide range of subjects (see previous post): « Do you think you can plan on being in business and not recognise the rise of social media technology — blogs and Internet clips, Facebook and Twitter, and the impact of online conversations between consumers on the wine world ?”
Gary Vaynerchuck is producing one wine clip almost every day on his Wine Library TV. Have a look (nearly 800 episodes archived). His site aims primarily at selling wines and it has a daily e-mail service. He also wrote a best-selling book: Crush It.
Walking briskly from one side of the stage to the other, Gary spoke clearly enough : “The world is changing very fast and what nobody could have imagined is that cell phone technology or social networks such as Facebook and Twitter would be our basis for growth. I can now talk and be recorded and watched by millions of people at the same time, and the same if I drink wine. This is the key contribution of today’s technologies.” (suite…)