I might have announced a lie - I posted that Jancis Robinson has joined facebook. Current indications are that the account is fake, although I am still awaiting an official statement from Jancis herself. In case this turns out to be true, I wish to apologize to everyone - clearly my enthusiasm for such a move clouded my judgment. I wanted to share the news, as from my point of view the implications would have been huge. I should have waited for confirmation which I did not.

I for one would have openly applauded a move by Jancis to further expand her involvement into social networks. Let's face it, she has been extremely successful with her twitter activities, and facebook would simply enable her to share her knowledge on an even broader basis and at the same time ensure loyalty on a global level.

I accept that I might have just thrown some cake into my own face, but I am not prone to misjudgments. Working on that one ;)

If there would be one benefit of my possible error, I would hope for an open discussion of the pros and cons of Jancis to really join facebook!

Update 26.04.: Jancis Robinson has now confirmed that the facebook page purporting to be hers has zero to do with her.

Big news - Jancis Robinson has joined facebook one week ago (how many of you noticed?)! This is indeed big news, and I wonder why this has not (yet) been a topic of hot discussions. Jancis is always keeping a low profile, and as far as I can tell she has not officially announced her latest involvement in social media. You can "like" her at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jancis-Robinson/118866221457959. I wonder if this move is related to facebook's newly implemented changes that you do not have to become "a fan", but rather just "like" a fanpage. What are your thoughts?

When I started my twitter account in May of last year, the German wine twitter scene was bursting with activity. Over the following months, I made many great contacts and I am very thankful for this. I have sadly noted that the user activity has gone down tremendously this year. I guess the main reason for this is that the pool of German users was limited to start with, and after some time the excitement faded away as the pool of new participants was not growing.

Many German twitter users have shifted their focus lately to Facebook, which has a broader audience in Germany. I fear that the German wine scene is losing out on a tremendous opportunity to add its own international voice: There are a great number of people who deserve to be heard, and could add value on a daily basis. The fact is that other wine lovers would eagerly listen to them if these users would use English as the preferred tweet language.

I know it is not easy to adjust to adjust to a non-mother tongue language. But it is possible, after all being German myself I spend most of my day using Greek and English. From my own experience, it does not matter if your grammar or your spelling is not perfect, what matters is that other people "get" what you are communicating. Trust me, they are very responsive! The German wine scene is too important to be ignored, and many people abroad are very interested in insight views. Only you, the German wine community, are able to deliver these insights.

Twitter offers an enormous opportunity to connect - don't shut yourself out because you are shy to use another language than German. Keep in mind that Facebook might currently have a broader audience, but this audience is still finite in the German language. If you do not expand, you might encounter a deja vu situation not too far away. I do not wish to criticize, rather encourage you to think somewhat more outside the box.

(Social) Media has changed the landscape - be a part of it, do not limit yourself, and keep in mind: People are interested in what you have to say, it is up to you to let them understand you.

I just retweeted @palatepress, who wrote: "@RobertMParkerJr 1710 followers, following 4. No surprise there." I also added "Agree, why use twitter at all? Honestly, why?". I believe I owe to elaborate on this: I have high regards for Robert Parker, his work has been invaluable, and I do not question his accomplishments. I am also a subscriber to the Wine Advocate and his website.

In my view, twitter is all about serious engagement, one should strive to listen, engage, and share. I question anybody who is using this tool only to "share" their own thoughts - while sharing in itself has a positive meaning, using it one sided can be like skating on thin ice. In today's world, sharing without engaging others is limited at best. While I appreciate that engagement is always time consuming, it is this very fact that wins over the interest and hearts of others.

I sincerely hope that Robert Parker and others who have not yet done so will start to embrace twitter in a more active way. Followers appreciate effort by the ones they follow. Parker's twitter account is still fairly new, and I am sure that once he starts to open up more, it will really be appreciated by a large community.

Did you know that value added taxes for hotel room rates in Germany have been lowered to 7% from 19%? This was apparently done in order to increase the turnover from hotel guests and should be great news, as the hotel rooms become more affordable to the paying clientele. Last November, I stayed at a hotel in Hamburg and payed 89 Euros per night, inclusive of 19% taxes. Last weekend, I stayed at the same hotel and was charged - 89 Euros, inclusive of 7% taxes! So the tax difference was obviously not passed on to me, it rather goes straight into the pocket of the hotel owner. I have the itching feeling that this is not an exception, but rather the rule. After all, who really is aware that the VAT rates have been lowered? I for once had no idea, and was of course happy to book the room at the same total rate I was charged two months ago. In addition, if you do not know how the total rate for the room was last year, you simply have no way to know if you are being ripped off.

It is a shame that pure greed ruins an honest effort by the German government. Next time you check into a German hotel, ask what the room rate was last year - if it was the same, you should let them know that you are aware of the new, lower value added tax rate. Maybe this will make a difference! Thanks goes to my good friend Olli, who alerted me of the new VAT rate, and me check my two invoices.

Jancis Robinson started using twitter earlier this year. To me, this marked a watershed; after all, one of the top authorities in wine embraced this new tool. She is not a very active twitterer, but does put the medium to good work. Jancis is a celebrity in the wine world, so it should be no surprise that she has more than 6500 followers, while only following a mere 33 people. After a few months, Jancis went further, she integrated her latest two tweets at the bottom of her main page, http://www.jancisrobinson.com/default.html. This simple and rather innocent action has now turned into a heated debate inside her forum.

 

I am stunned just how many people still view twitter as a complete useless and dumb tool and wonder why Jancis brought this on her board. Twitter is marked as a “mindless silly way of communicating”. Twitter users are grouped as users with “a desire to take uninteresting facts and assume that people want to know because they are self absorbed”. Complaints about a lack of participation in the discussion from twitter users also show up, although the tone is rather aggressive: “Perhaps they don't read properly formatted sections of your site.”

 

Jancis so far has reacted in a very polite manner, pointing out that subscribers to her site, who do not wish to get involved with twitter campaigns, do not have scroll down in order to read her tweets. It must be a very narrow passage to treat on, as I can fully appreciate the fact that she cannot alienate her existing subscriber base that have participated so much at her site in the past. Still, the whole thing is rather sad, and I am left wondering who really are the people that are so self-absorbed, the twitter users, or the twitter opponents who started this thread and weigh in so heavily.

 

I have used twitter for just 7 months now, and find it to be an extremely valuable tool to connect with people. These connections often result in real actions. The ability to make contact through twitter and bring these contacts “alive” is simply a staggering opportunity that did not exist a short while ago. The majority of the actions I have taken this year to promote my business can be traced to actions initiated through twitter. It takes more than just sending out a self-promoting or “self absorbed” tweet a day. With effort and sincere engagement however, there seems to be no limit to the possible rewards.

 

I hope that Jancis will continue to take on the role as a “conservative European” trend setter in the world of wine, I much admire her for this. And I hope that I did not offend anyone calling her European, although chances for this might be slim. I wish to add that I lived in the UK for more than a decade, and truly felt at home there.

Update: Jancis has now responded in her forum, in a truly diplomatic way - in addition of MW she is a Master of Communication :)

http://www.jancisrobinson.com/forum/showthread.php?p=24907#post24907

I will be live on air tomorrow as a special guest at Ted Lelekas' http://twitter.com/ted_lelekas wine radio show. The station is City FM 99.5, the show will air lunchtime 1200 to 1300 GMT (1400 to 1500 Greek time), and I will be joining half way through. We will discuss Greek wines and wine blogging. The twist for me is that the show is in Greek, so listeners should have guaranteed entertainment, as my Greek is quite funny most of the time! You can listen to the show on the Internet http://www.city995.gr

Sign of the times? The demand for fine wines has already shifted dramatically to Hong Kong, maybe the Chinese also become the new trendsetter of what wines will be hot? Thanks to Kat from www.livingingreece.gr for alerting me to the Greek link covering this story.

<p> Firm seals wine deals to tap growing demand by -- SHENZHEN-BASED Silver Base International Development, the largest distributor of Chinese premier spirit Wuliangye, has signed agreements with several international wineries to accelerate its entry into the wine business... </p>

Today there were several announcements concerning LinkedIn:

• The company is opening up its API in order to let developers tap into the LinkedIn's social network
• TweetDeck announced that its users will be able to add a LinkedIn column to TweetDeck in the next updated version
  
• Posterous added LinkedIn as an autopost site and will show status updates in the profiles
  

These are very important steps taken by LinkedIn. I have had a profile on LinkedIn well before I connected to Twitter, Facebook, Posterous and Tumblr, but always felt that LinkedIn was too static in its nature. One cannot ignore the fact that a lot of business users are connected to LinkedIn, yet its potential was never as obvious to me, as with other social networking tools. LinkedIn's decision to become more dynamic is very welcome news indeed. It remains to be seen how many of its users will actively use the new tools, but I suspect that many "old guard" users who have not yet actively used the other dynamic platforms might well be tempted by the new LinkedIn offerings. That in itself might have an impact on the industry.