This just in: Gary Vaynerchuk, everyone’s favorite wine vlogging superstar, has just agreed to purchase cork’d as a part of a newly formed company (which he will head).
On the surface, this might not sound like big news, but I think that the potential growth here is huge.
I’ve toyed with places like Cellar Tracker and cork’d in the past, but none of these site have really impressed me as anything more than searchable mini-blogs where people can post tasting notes. Sure, that is still providing a service to users-and online tasting journal. But I have a little black notebook and this blog for that. I always wanted more "community" from these sites and Gary is the king of community, having built the juggernaut that is Wine Library TV.
When I asked Gary about his Rupert Murdoch-esque purchase he told me "We will do everything to make it a very exciting place to visit and
share wine thoughts and we are aware there are many things we need to
do to make it RAD for wine lovers and plan on doing them all."
That’s a tall order, but maybe we can help him out a little bit.
If you’re a cork’d user or have used it (or any other similar site in the past), what would you like to see changed, added or enhanced on the site?
I’m sure that they’ll adopt the same 100-point scale that Gary uses, which I don’t love, but that’s a common beast in the wine world that is not worth arguing about. There will also, no doubt, be some tie-ins and co-branding between cork’d and WLTV, that will be interesting to see and let’s hope that the cork’d site doesn’t get too heavy handed with the hard sell. Gary does a nice job of balancing WLTV with the online store, so I hope he continues to walk that tightrope.
Anyway, I don’t want to bias anyone with my own opinions just yet, so let me (and Gary) know what you’d like to see at cork’d. Leave your thoughts in the comments on this post.