Nunok's Blog: Snooth Turns Wine Discovery Into a Social Game

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Snooth Turns Wine Discovery Into a Social Game

via Mashable! by Erica Swallow on 6/1/11

Snooth, the world's largest wine site, continues to lead tech innovation within the wine industry. On Wednesday, the company added a social layer called Wine Rack to its site, enabling users to better discover and learn about new wines.

Wine Rack uses gaming mechanics to encourage users to discover and taste more wines, rewarding them with trophies to show their wine experience and knowledge. Through wine tutorials and tasting flights, the feature helps users build wine comprehension while enabling them to better interact with others in the Snooth community and earn virtual souvenirs for their achievements.

Wine Rack is an innovation preceded by other successful launches by Gramercy Labs, the lifestyle-focused startup collective founded by Philip James and Kevin Fortuna. Last year, it launched the Snooth Wine Pro iPhone app, which uses image recognition to help users find and purchase wines, among other features. Late last year, the company also founded Lot18, a private sale site for wine and epicurean products that is revolutionizing the way wine is distributed. Founder Philip James recently told Business Insider that Lot18 is generating seven figures in sales every month. Not too shabby for a startup that has only been around for the better half of a year.

We spoke with CTO and co-founder Mark Angelillo for a first look at Wine Rack. He explained that the initial idea behind Wine Rack was "to give users a better idea of how they were learning and growing with wine, how they were getting interested in the product and how they were progressing through playing with wine data."

Angelillo and his team (which includes himself, another engineer and a designer) put extensive research into the product, consulting with social gaming experts at Foursquare, Zynga and Badgeville; reading papers on gaming theory; and discussing the app's functionality and features with wine specialists, including Snooth Editor Gregory Dal Piaz.

Check out Wine Rack's features in the gallery below, and, in the comments below, let us know your thoughts on the service and if you'd use it.

Discover, Taste, Win

Snooth's new social layer, Wine Rack, uses gaming mechanics to encourage users to discover and taste more wines. Users are rewarded with virtual trophies to show their wine experience and knowledge.

The app lives on Snooth's website, but Angelillo's team plans to make it more mobile-compatible in the future.

Learning about Wines with the Library

The Wine Rack Library features a growing number of educational units that aim to help users increase their knowledge of wines.

The units are created by Snooth Editor Gregory Dal Piaz and lead users through the process of learning about wine. Users are encouraged to read the article and then complete the quiz to win the corresponding trophy.

All Wines View

The "All Wines" page enables a user to see all wines that he or she has interacted with on Snooth. Interactions with wines include rating, reviewing, saving, adding them to the wishlist, and storing them in the virtual cellar.

Cellar Management with Cellar View

For more detail-oriented wine collectors, Snooth is releasing the Cellar view, which enables users to track their personal cellars. Users can manage details such as the wine's name, notes, value and size, as well as noting how many bottles he or she has of it.

Building a Wine Wishlist

Users can build a wishlist of wines that can be viewed as a gallery or in an Excel-style format, as with Cellar view. In the future, Snooth will include pricing data in the wishlist to help users with purchasing decisions.

Learning about Wines with Flights

Users interested in strengthening their wine knowledge will enjoy the Flights section on Wine Rack. A "tasting flight" is a term used in the wine industry to discuss a selection of wines grouped together for tasting and comparing.

For example, the "Earn Your Colors" flight challenges users to taste through one red, one white and one rosé wine in order to earn the trophy.

Adding Wines to a Flight

To learn more about the details of a flight, users can click on each wine type within the flight, upon which a pop-up window appears, explaining what types of wines qualify. Users can then search Snooth to add wines to their flights. Or, if they have already reviewed a qualifying wine, the app identifies and notes it.

In-Depth Flight Page

Each flight has its own page dedicated to explaining how a user can complete it. A user's progress is indicated, and once he or she completes the flight, the date is noted. Users can see which people from their network have completed the flight, are "almost there" or are "working on it." Users can also see data from the entire Snooth community about how many (and which) users have completed a particular flight, along with the number of users within the community who have completed it.

Trophies Page

Users can earn two types of trophies with Wine Rack: Flight trophies and Snooth trophies. Flight trophies are unlocked when a user completes a flight. Snooth trophies are based on interactions within the community and include activities such as reviewing wines from certain regions and tasting a particular number or type of wines. All trophies are showcased within the Trophies page.

Brand trophies are also available for wine companies interested in engaging the Snooth community. Today Wine Rack launches with its first partner, Terlato Wines International, which is offering a limited edition trophy for users that read an article about one of its wine brands, Seven Daughters, and complete its related quiz in the Library section of the app.

Learning About Trophies

Each trophy has its own page dedicated to explaining how a user can earn it. For example, the "Sampler" trophy is unlocked by reviewing 5 wines. The trophy page also shows details about who has unlocked the trophy within a user's network and the entire community.

Stats Page

For those interested in data, the Stats page gives a quick overview of a user's interactions and portfolio on Snooth, including details such as trophies earned, total number of wine ratings and reviews and number of wines cellared.

Wine Rack Contest

In honor of its launch of Wine Rack, Snooth is hosting a contest on Twitter to give away $300 in wine accessories. Tweeters must follow @Snooth on Twitter, and include the hashtag #snoothwinerack and the link http://bit.ly/snoothwinerack in their tweet to enter.

The New Social Profile Page

In its move to make the site more engaging, Snooth also redesigned its member profile pages and launched the "Taste Button." The Taste Button is located across the site, and most notably on the user's profile page, and enables users to quickly note which wines they are tasting at the moment.

The Taste Button

The Taste Button mimics Facebook and Twitter in its simplicity, asking the question, "What are you tasting?" When a user inputs information, the outcome is a status update on his or her profile. The tasted wine is placed in the users Wine Rack and if a trophy is unlocked, a message will appear.

When a user is visiting another user's profile page, the Taste Button asks, "What should [User's Name] taste?" This gives users the ability to easily recommend wines to one another.