I think, we’re able to offer people the ability to overcome that one core roadblock — the funding — and then additionally allow people to build this community and nurture an audience around a project.

I think the great part about the Kickstarter story is that the success of Kickstarter has meant success for more than just the company. It has meant success for every single successfully funded project (well over 20,000 now). It has meant that all of those people associated with those projects have been able to do something that they really wanted to do.

A boring old machined-steel-fits-in-my-hand-scrolls-at-60-fps-with-proper-physics-glorious-retina-none-of-this-crap-pentile-display black iPhone 4S.

And then this on whether or not to build an app.

Anyway, I say make an app if it’s better as an app. If you’re not sure, then don’t bother. The folks working on WebKit are more talented than the average app developer. Just embrace the constraints of web technology — don’t make your site act like an app. Or chop down a tree with a herring. You’d think that was obvious.

He’s a quotable dude.

I did some pretty nutso stuff with that little turtle.

I wonder what he’s been up to.

“Well from my perspective, a film costs a lot of money. You could build three hospitals with the cost of one film and I take that very seriously. I take the responsibility of being a person involved in a piece of that product. The only way to be decent about it is to make that money back so at least you don’t feel that money is wasted.

If it’s cost a hundred million dollars and that money is completely wasted – it never even makes its money back – that would be so mortifying to me. What a waste of money. Better to put it into a hospital. Do you see what I’m saying?

So I feel it’s my responsibility to help the investors – and the investors are often you and me. We don’t realize it, but it’s our pension funds. Through that bank or company that’s investing in this hedge fund, that is investing in the film. So I feel a fiscal responsibility to help the investors.”

I know the resources for larger budget films typically come from multiple sources but I suppose I never realized how the failure of a film could have an effect on some of these funds. Go see a Helen Mirren film.

Robert quipped that he was happy that he stuck to his guns regarding longform videos of this type. He isn’t alone.

Not too long after the Twitter video was recorded, at Web 2 Expo in San Fransisco, I was fortunate enough to record an episode of LunchMeet with Eddie Codel.

Here is that episode (in the Viddler player because PodTech’s embed no longer works):

You may argue that Viddler hasn’t had the cultural impact that Twitter has had on the world – but you’re not sitting in this chair. Viddler has done amazing things since that day with a meager budget, only a small percentage of the man-power, and from locations that many think out-of-touch.

Many of these stories are about to be told on The Viddler Spotlight. Stay tuned.

My favorite bits are the real story behind the iPhone’s inception (which we’ve heard from various places but it was nice to finally hear it from him), his thoughts on why they are choosing not to include Flash comparing it to choosing to eliminate floppy and optical disk drives and the whole iPhone-theft story.

/via Simon Willison.

I love these few bits. First, a little about Terry’s reputation.

“Marcus isn’t the only journalist to swoon over Gross — other colleagues speak of her with reverence, as do her listeners, many of whom say “Fresh Air” is their favorite part of the day or the only thing that gets them through a long commute. And her guests declare her unrivaled among interviewers. An icon of the intellectual elite, Gross elicits great new information from overinterviewed celebrities and public figures. She’s a sympathetic, intelligent listener who can also push hard when necessary.”

And this bit, which is the reason I enjoy the show so much.

“… Gross does not see herself or her show as being about “gotcha” moments and scoops, but about the arts and the mind.”

I love that the entire interview is available on the Web, ad free.

As a reminder, here is what I said about Terry Gross in January of this year.

“Terry Gross, the host of Fresh Air, is an unassuming, casual interviewer that consistently conducts interviews that hold your attention for the entire length of the program. She’s intelligent, in touch with what the audience wants to know, and obviously tirelessly prepares for each episode.”

/via Liz Danzico.

My thoughts on transparency in software development got me thinking about a particular application that I use on a daily basis, Coda. I think it is safe to say that most Coda users, of which I consulted six for this post, are not just Coda users, they are Coda plus other software users. Why? Because Coda doesn’t do everything that Web developers need it to do. It may never do everything and that’s ok with Panic.

Textmate users, on the other hand, are a slightly different breed. The application has been around a little longer, has a richer plugin architecture, and those two facts help to fill in more of the holes in a Web developers workflow. That being said, many people wish they could switch to Coda full time. With each update Panic makes to Coda this becomes more a reality.

I was thinking about getting into specific features that Coda does not have that Textmate does – but that isn’t the point of this post. I’ve since polled the developers that I’ve spoken with and created the list based on their priority and sent it to Panic to do with whatever they’d like. Now, back to the point.

But how do Web developers know which application is right for them? How do they know which application, or applications, to invest in? In the case of Coda – should they buy the two or three applications that they need to complete their workflow or should they wait for Coda to support it? In many cases developers own both Textmate and Coda and flip back and forth between the two of them.

If you remember the example in Thoughts on transparency in software development, the “I want to print a photo that I received in email” example, someone would have invested in three separate applications only to have those features included in one application later on. Not necessarily a waste of money, since you were able to view and print images for the time the email application did not support those features, but it would have been nice to know it was coming.

In a recent email interview with Panic co-founders Steven Frank and Cabel Sasser we discussed this issue and also managed to peer inside the minds of the Portland based software development company. The veil over Panic may be lifted in the near future (or at the very least sewn with a different thread count), the speed at which updates to their products are published may quicken, and customer’s of Panic may be able to make wise decisions based on having information instead of simply guessing. But all of that will come with time. For now, lets focus on just a few simple questions to see where Coda is at currently.

I asked both Cabel and Steven a few questions about Coda and they were nice enough to answer. For the record, I sent these questions to Panic’s co-founders on the very last day of July. It is now September 4th and Coda is currently at version 1.6.5, not 1.6.4.

1. Coda is currently at version 1.6.4. It is over two years old. Being a veteran of launching software applications how has Coda done in the eyes of Panic?

Steven: We’re very happy with Coda’s performance in the market. It’s funny, Transmit hasn’t had a big “feature” update in 4 years, and we hardly ever hear anything about that. Coda is different. We get asked every day when the next version is coming. I take that as a sign of great enthusiasm. People like what it can do, and just like us, they see the potential for it to do more. I know that, personally, the software I’m most vocal about is the software I use and like the most — it’s about making something good even better. We’re very actively developing both of these apps.

2. Software companies that have smaller applications generally put out more releases more often than a company like Panic with an application like Coda. It has taken over two years to get to 1.6.4. Would you rather the pace that you’re currently operating at or would you like to give the users of Coda more updates more often?

Steven: Because Coda is such a young product (1.x) we are getting a lot of both feature requests and bug reports. It’s hard to balance the two, because obviously you want to fix bugs in the existing functionality, but you also want to keep new, fresh ideas coming into the product.

I think with Coda, we’re definitely seeing that people would like more frequent smaller releases, rather than fewer big releases, which is not something that has always been the case for us. It’s not how we’ve traditionally operated, so I think it’s taking some time to turn the ship.

We also haven’t been the greatest at communicating with users, in my opinion. Historically, we’ve followed Apple’s example of not pre-announcing anything before its time. Cabel and I have been talking at length lately about whether this continues to make sense and to what degree. Obviously, we don’t want to lay out our entire roadmap for our competitors, but it’s clear that people increasingly demand more open lines of communication with the companies they do business with.

It is kind of funny though — you don’t see as much criticism when, say, DreamWeaver goes a few months without an update, and that product costs four times as much as Coda. I find it interesting that smaller companies are held to a higher standard at a lower price.

3. Coda is gorgeous. Apple has even copied from it. As a Viddler team member I remember Cabel’s presentation at C4[1], Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch‘s most excellent Mac development conference, being a very popular video. Has there been any UI challenges that you’ve faced since 1.0 that you’ve had to tackle, overcome, and are subsequently happy with?

Cabel: There are two classic, long-standing Coda UI challenges that haunt us. The first one is tricky and wound up becoming a preference: if the sidebar items should be double clicked, or single clicked. “iApps” have single-click sidebars, but our sidebar is special in that it’s basically a miniature Finder — and in the Finder, you single click to select, and double click to open. The second is that some of our tools are alternate views of the same document (Edit, Preview, CSS) and some are tools layered on top of your document (Books, Terminal). The fact that you can switch to Terminal and have a live, active document “underneath” terminal has never been very clear.

These are the two biggies we’re always thinking about!

As for things that we’ve added since 1.0 that we’ve been happy about, I was happy with our solution to “Find Within Files”, added in Coda 1.5. We tried a lot of approaches to wedging in an extra “find in files” interface into the existing find bar, until I realized that we could extend the find bar over the files list itself, and put file-specific options over there. As a result, it’s a huge new feature with minimal UI impact! That’s always a nice feeling.

4. What is the version number for the next version of Coda? Care to talk a little bit about: the amount of work that has gone into it, how many people work on Coda, and perhaps leak out something that is slated to be in it?

Steven: The next stop for Coda is 2.0. We are making improvements across the board, but are putting most of our effort into editor features, since that’s where people spend 80-90% of their time in a product like Coda. After we added Subversion support, code-folding was without question the next most requested feature, and I think it’s not much of a secret any more that we will have folding in 2.0.

Editor’s note: I’m very glad to know that code folding is included in the next major update of Coda.

I’m disappointed, however, that Steven decided not to answer how long it takes to work on a build of Coda and how many people Panic has contributing to its code base, design, QA, etc. I’d love to know more about this process at Panic and if anyone at Panic would be willing to put those details in the comments of this post, I think other people would be interested in that information also.

5. There is no way that Panic can possibly put everything into Coda that people want. Do you know of any features, or a feature, that you know will never, ever, ever be in Coda?

Steven: I don’t like the word “never”. But I think it’s fair to say that we are not particularly interested in evolving Coda too far in the direction of WYSIWYG editing. We want to focus on the hand-coding workflow. (Although, there’s always room for a plug-in to do something here. So, again, never say never.)

6. No matter how much you jam into the next version of Coda developers will always need to hop between Coda and other applications to do some of the things they need for their workflow. Coda may, at some point, take care of some these things but developers will never really know until it comes out. Is this something Panic thinks about? Cares about? Would like to do better at? Or, is this simply the nature of the software development business?

Steven: We try to cover everything we feel the majority of people are likely to need, and want to evolve our plug-in API to help fill in any gaps. We’ve already seen some amazing things done with the limited plug-in API that was introduced in 1.5. But if you look at any support forum on the net, all software is missing one crucial feature for somebody, even software that’s been around for decades. Trying to please absolutely everyone will drive a developer mad, and usually makes the product worse in the general case.

7. Have the new offices made Panic more productive? Care to share an exclusive photo of the team at Panic HQ?

Steven: The new office is great. We’re no longer elbow-to-elbow and have a wonderful creative atmosphere to foster growth. And our internet connection is much faster!

Editor’s note: Although Steven and Cabel didn’t give up an exclusive photo I found this photo of their offices on Flickr. Elbow room indeed.

I’m very happy that Panic is considering new ideas on how they can be more transparent than they currently are about forthcoming updates to their products. No matter how they choose to solve this issue it will be a step in the right direction.

Steven brought out an excellent point in his answer to question #6 when he said it is funny that companies like Panic are held to a higher standard than companies like Adobe in the matter of corporate transparency. Although it is true I think there is solid reasoning why people wish companies like Panic would lead the way in this regard. Because they feel as though they know Panic. Do you know the names of the, no doubt incredibly talented, people that work on Dreamweaver? Have you ever sent an email to Adobe with 6 questions about transparency and the next version of Dreamweaver and receive a response? Probably not. I believe smaller companies like Panic are held to a higher standard because people hope that these sized companies are listening and can change much more rapidly than a corporate giant.

Thanks to both Cabel and Steven for answering the questions and for all of their team’s hard work on their products.

Thanks to Jon Christopher, Andrew Smith, Chris Coleman, Jake Dahn, and everyone else that contributed to this interview.

I haven’t done a video on Viddler since November! This doesn’t make up for it but at least there is something with me out there now. I’ve gotta hop on it. Maybe I’ll take one of the Skribit suggestions for this site and use video instead of writing to check it off the list.

Thanks to Owen for coming into Viddler HQ last week and for doing this video.

Source: Polaroid, only MOSTLY dead.

One could sit back and try to analyze why this is happening; with Twitter as Pownce’s main “competitor” (whether justly so or not) and with Pownce having a reasonable amount of uptime problems – you could say this is a result of these two, or many other things.  But I’m less worried about the “why” and more interested in the “what’s next”?

That is why I asked Mike Malone, one of the Pownce team members that is moving to Six Apart, to answer two simple questions (which he was happy to do).

Leah said, in the blog post announcement, that “we’ll come back with something much better in 2009″ – Does this mean that Pownce will come back as a better service? Or, something completely different?

“It is going to come back as something “very cool and very different”. [...] Whether it will be called “Pownce” is to be determined.”

Pownce seems fairly active still. Is there any direct benefit to shutting the service down within two weeks?

“The benefit is basically that we can concentrate on the new projects we’re working on.”

After asking Mike to elaborate on the second answer, he stated that it is generally tough to keep Pownce up and running and takes up a lot of time.  Shutting the service helps them to free up their time in order to focus their efforts on getting, what they feel, is a really valuable new service up and running quicker than they could have without shutting Pownce down.

Pownce, although I really liked the service, never really made it into my daily stops insomuch as other services like Twitter, Brightkite, and FriendFeed have.  So I can’t say I’m particularly saddened about its being shut down.  However, I do look forward to Six Apart and the ex-Pownce team creating something new and exciting in the New Year that hopefully will be a more focused and stable product to use.

Thanks to Mike for answering my questions.

Andy acted quickly but then asked David to have a conversation about the film and its future.

Source: Interview with David Winton, Director of “Code Rush” Mozilla Documentary.

Brett Wilson

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Brett Wilson, CEO of TubeMogul, and we were talking about the partnership between TubeMogul and Viddler. We also talked about surfing and family, but for now we’ll focus on TubeMogul and Viddler.

A few days later I asked Brett if I could ask him a few questions about something he mentioned over lunch, TubeMogul’s yet-to-be-announced although already launched tier system, and publish them here on my site.  Brett being the great guy that he is didn’t even hesitate.

When TubeMogul turned on support for its users to upload to Viddler as a distribution channel, we began to see all sorts of “spammy” videos and members showing up.  We always had abuse on Viddler, and there was certainly more good than bad coming from the TubeMogul partnership, but we wanted to see if we could help them solve this issue.  Brett explained that they were already working on that.  I’ll let him explain.

Thanks for doing the interview Brett.  Real quickly; can you give us the broad strokes of what TubeMogul aims to do?

Brett: First of all thanks for having me, and hello to all of your readers.  Our goal at TubeMogul is to solve problems for content creators.  First, we make it easy for content creators to deploy video to multiple sites in one shot.  This saves content creators time and often increases the size of their audience.  Next, we bring all of the available analytics back into TubeMogul and give the content creator an aggregated view of their video’s consumption along with easy to use reporting and data export tools.  And TubeMogul is free.

Me: The power of TubeMogul, and the simplicity behind its goals, are palpable. Essentially you can log into TubeMogul, upload a video, choose all of the video sharing sites you want it to appear on, and then track your statistics right there on TubeMogul, without ever having to visit every single video sharing site.  TubeMogul fills a very big need for people like video podcasters who, on their own if TubeMogul didn’t exist, were doing this anyway.

Can you explain what problem the new tier system solves and a little bit about how it works?

Brett: Some video sharing sites we work with are selective about the content they accept.  For example, HowCast is a How-To site and only wants instructional videos.  Other sites, only accept professional quality or episodic videos. While we have nothing against cheap Viagra or making millions from home, many of our partner sites consider these videos to be spam.  To address these issues, we are asking content creators to go through a one-time review process to deploy video to certain sites.  This will be a painless process - fill out a simple form and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.  Approved content creators will be able to deploy to any or all sites of their choosing.

Me: I can tell you that from Viddler’s perspective, this system is really great and means a lot to us.  This shows that TubeMogul is interested in creating a quality product, not a spammy one.  TubeMogul could have easily allowed spam-like content to any of the channels, and left it up to us to weed out the crap.  This would have “fluffed” their statistics, made them appear bigger than they really are, and would have looked good on paper.  But they didn’t do that – they are focused on building a product that is both valuable to the content producer and the content consumer (all the way down to the viewer). 

In other words; if you start seeing less spam on your favorite video sharing site – send Brett an email and thank him and his team for their hard work.  They are cutting the problem off at the bud.

Brett in India, 2006

Do you have any plans, or have you already, to add actual SPAM  filtering techniques to TubeMogul?  Obviously there are some “repeat  offenders” with video spam, some of which could be detected?  Or do you feel it is a moving target?

Brett: The tier system we are putting into place is a trust-based system.  If a content creator tells us that they have appropriate videos then we will give them the keys to the kingdom. If we see abuse then I suppose we will have to take away the keys.  Do keep in mind that very few of the tens of thousands of videos that we deploy each day are spam.

Me: He’s right. The vast majority of the video that we see at Viddler from TubeMogul is not spam.  But as all of us that have dealt with publishing systems know, spam always becomes a problem.  It started with the postal mail system, spread onto the Internet in the form of email, comment spam, and now we’re seeing video spam.  It is a sad inevitability.  I’m happy TubeMogul is choosing to use a human system to battle it rather than a electronic one.

I think the best part about TubeMogul is that hard working video producers can easily share their video on multiple services quickly and easily, and also have a one-stop area to view statistics from each of those services; how do you see this new tier system being of benefit to high-quality video producers?

Brett: If we can help to eliminate spam in the online video ecosphere we help to keep everyone’s focus and energy on content that people want to consume. And of course less spam means lower infrastructure and bandwidth costs for all.

Me: Have you ever seen a better sentence in your life?  Read it again, I urge you.  What he is saying is that by building this system they are helping to find the signal through the noise. Actually, he is saying they will cut down the noise entirely.  By doing so, people can find what they want easier (which is better for viewer and producer alike), and services like Viddler won’t have to pay to host spam.  This helps everyone.

Side note: If I told you how much Viddler has had to pay to host spam and pirated content, you’d fall out of your chair.  Behind-the-scenes we’ve been building and refining our methods to combat these issues, and we’ve gotten really good at it.  But this new tier system from TubeMogul is going to help us a lot.

You said, in a recent Beet.tv interview I saw, that the big problem now is monetizing these videos.  TubeMogul helps by providing accurate statistics for videos to deliver to potential advertisers.  Does TubeMogul ever envision themselves having potential advertisers ask them where the hotspots are based on your analytics?  Has this already happened?

Brett: Yes, we do intend to utilize the cross-site data we are collecting to help advertisers discover content creators that can help them to reach their desired audience.  By the way, this is absolutely in line with our mission to help solve problems for content creators.  

We also realize that for many content creators the endgame may not be ad revenue…in some cases the name of the game is fame; and in other cases the video itself is the ad or serves a promotional capacity.

Me: He sorta dodged that last question (probably not on purpose and maybe he’ll leave a comment on this post if he sees it).  My guess is that if you want to advertise with video on the Web, TubeMogul is going to become a major source for accurate statistics to place those advertisements efficiently.  I’m excited to see what the future holds both for TubeMogul and Viddler as we work together to help video producers earn a living from their hard work.

Well, always be sure to direct any advertising interest towards Viddler.com ok?

Brett: I’ve got my Viddler shirt on now

Thanks for doing the interview and thanks to you and your team for building a great product in TubeMogul.

Brett: My pleasure and likewise. 

Me: My reasons for doing this interview with Brett are many-fold.  First, I wanted to show why Viddler’s partnership with TubeMogul was an easy decision. How innovative and proactive the TubeMogul is.  When we added support for TubeMogul to Viddler many people were happy about it (as they’d been asking for it for months beforehand).  However, there were some that were disappointed because of the influx of videos that were coming to Viddler, who were not part of the community on Viddler.  Uploading through TubeMogul is definitely not a warm, community-like experience.  It used to be that you were a Viddler member, you interacted with other Viddler members, and Viddler members were the people viewing, commenting, and favoriting your videos.  Now we’re seeing people that upload video to Viddler that never fill out their profiles.  This has caused a small amount of community displeasure, but it is a problem we’re going to work on solving – and with the TubeMogul team at the healm, I know that we’re both up for that challenge.

As a small suggestion to video content producers: Interact with the communities that you share your videos with.  It will go a long way towards building a large, interactive audience.

The other reason is that I’m still a firm believer in niches.  Brett touched on it with his example of How-Cast and how some videos “belong” on one service but might not fit on another.  I believe the future of online video is going to be in niches (it is already happening) and I think TubeMogul, and services like it, are going to be one of the ways this separating work occurs.  The question is how to we, Viddler, fit into that vision of the future and work with companies like TubeMogul to provide the best possible platform to host video regardless of the niche.  I think we know how and we’ll continue to execute on that vision of the future.

Thanks again to Brett and TubeMogul for all of their hard work.

“I fins I am very self-critical when I see my work on the screen. In Star Wars I was quite pleased with the officers, guards, pilots, ground crew etc, both Imperial and rebels, for which we had no input from the States, especially with the Imperial officers. In Empire I thought the Snowtroopers worked pretty well.”

Yeah, they worked pretty well.

Source: The Lightsabre Interview.

Weighing in at over 120Mb, this podcast is over two hours long so you might not find the time to listen to it for a while. When and if you do, please come back and let me know what you thought of the show.

Our topics included: Viddler (of course), the Viddler API, being a geek, the iPhone macro lens (video demo), my background in computers, a special announcement gets thrown in, and much more. All in all I think the interview portion weighs in at nearly 50 minutes.

The interview begins at around 40:00 into the show.

Thanks to Alan Chaess, and his team at the OtakuGeneration.net podcast, for inviting me to be on the show and I hope to someday be part of another show!

“I think it’s just one of those odd things where something gets picked up and people run with it,” Astley said. “But that’s what brilliant about the Internet.”

Yes, that is what is brilliant about the Internet, Rickrolling.

(Source:Web Scout – Online Entertainment and Culture – Los Angeles Times)

I can’t even begin to tell you how privileged I feel to have been considered a “leader”. Of course they must use the term rather loosely to include me in the group of interviewees they’ve had over recent months including a mayor, a mayoral candidate, and the CEO of a Hospital.

Doing the interview was really fun and was recorded via Skype. The students setup this process very well and dare I say even better than other podcasts I’ve had the privilege of being on. I received the invite to be on this podcast at least a month in advance and got the questions that would be asked at least a few days in advance (in fact I think they sent them twice just to make sure I got them). They stream the interview live too, and have a live chat that people can participate in.

The topics of the interview ranged from what type of training students and teachers should strive for to help ensure successful entry into the business/career market, but also on how people enjoy learning and what works and doesn’t. We talked about the importance of being able to learn on your own, while still being able to work as a team. And We discuess the trend of working remotely, how it works at Viddler, and what the future might hold when these students begin their careers.

It was a lot of fun and I’m still incredibly humbled to have been part of the podcast. If you have some time be sure to listen to all of the interviews this team has put together. Thanks to the entire Lunchtime Leaders Podcast team: Liz, Alexis, Jill, Taylor, Sarah, Isabelle, and Mr. Bogush.

Our topics of discussion on the show ranged from a general overview of Viddler itself, a description of what can be done with Viddler’s API, and of course we talk about SXSW Videos since this was just prior to the festivals this year.

If you have time, be sure to give it a listen. Sorry I haven’t mentioned it until now, but I had fun being on the program, and I hope Philly TIP returns stronger than ever!

Gary Vaynerchuk in London
Photo credit: The hard working Tara Hunt

For those that do not know Gary, Wine Library TV, or Cork’d – let me take a second to catch you up to speed. Gary Vaynerchuk is the Director of Operations for Wine Library and began his career in wine at the ripe age of 17 (someone call the cops). He’s visited every major wine region on the planet, has probably tasted more wine this week than most people do in their adult lives, and is single handedly trying to “change the wine world” (or, trying to bring the community into every aspect of wine instead of it being an elitist club as it has been for so long).

Gary’s main mode of attack has been Wine Library TV, his daily video blog, where he tastes wine and rates it “live”. Even though he has personal relationships with most if not all of the vineyards that have their wine in his store, Gary does not hold back with his criticisms nor his accolades. His honesty, charisma, and passion for wine has made his video blog one of the top video blogs on the Internet and certainly the number one vlog for wine!

Cork’d, the brain-child of Dan Benjamin and Dan Cederholm, is a social network centered on keeping a wine journal and creating a list of wines you’d like to try based on what you’re friends have had. Cork’d is well built, beautifully designed, and bustling with active fans of wine.

For all of the above reasons – the merging of Gary Vaynerchuk’s empire with Cork’d is synergy++.

So now that you’re all caught up to speed, I thought I’d ask Gary a few questions about his acquisition of Cork’d and what it will mean for his current WLTV audience (of which I’ve been a member of since the very beginning).

When did you first discover Cork’d and when did you get interested it in as a property for Wine Library?

Gary: “Last May and last May! LOL. I knew this was it, I have been dreaming of launching a name I own, ratingwines.com, for 6 years (look it up) and when i saw Cork’d my dreams were dashed ”

I thought it was interesting that Gary knew he wanted to do something like Cork’d from the very beginning. This alone shows his dedication to his mantra or “changing the wine world”. Obviously the entire industry has been geared more towards paying attention to only a select few for wine ratings. Now, using Cork’d, one can see the consensus of the entire community rather than just one person using one rating system.

To show a little history here, Dan Benjamin shows that Wine Library was the longest running sponsor for Cork’d, which shows that Gary was always in the prime position to tap into this community and that Gary was always trying to help Cork’d become the best it possibly can be:

“One of our longest running advertisers was Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk’s excellent wine videocast. Each month, Gary would call us and buy out the top-spot in the Cork’d sidebar. Behind the scenes, he was always talking about partnering with us, coming up with ways we could enhance Cork’d, tie us in to his huge database of wines and wine labels – he really wanted to see Cork’d succeed.” — [source]

It is this dedication to helping something that he didn’t even own at the time that shows that Cork’d is in great hands going forward.

The synergy between Wine Library, Wine Library TV, your wine label service, and Cork’d are obvious! How long before we start to see all of these services mashed together, and what do you think the first thing to be integrated will be?

I’m a Vayniac – at Seneca Lake, NY
Get your shirt!

Gary: “Very soon! Give us 30-45 days to start wowing you!”

I’ve already seen and spoke to the WLTV crew about a few of the things they are working on. Obviously, being Viddler‘s Community Evangelist, I was interested to know how each episode of Wine Library TV (down to tasting each wine) would fit into this deal. Look for some pretty cool tie ins between Wine Library TV, Cork’d, and Viddler’s “linking to any moment” technology. However, as a “Vayniac”, I’m even more excited about having access to Gary’s tastings across this entire network of sites.

What part of this entire deal has you the most excited? I know for me its being able to watch the video of you tasting a wine that I may have had right from the Cork’d site. What about you?

Gary: “The fact that people can share and enjoy each other. Cork’d has given the infrastructure needed to create the wine community I dream of. I can’t wait to see wines have 100 reviews on them each, that will be fun!”

This also supports his mantra. At the end of each show, Gary emphasizes “You, with a little bit of me, we’re changing the wine world. Aren’t we?” Well now more than ever Gary is trying to put that power into the hands of the community rather than himself. Sure he’s the ring leader (and a very good one at that) but now all of us have the ability to say what we think about the wine’s we’re tasting and actually have it matter instead of falling on deaf ears.

You’ve got a ton of loyal Vayniacs that use the WineLibrary TV forums right now. Are all of us Vayniacs going to have to sign up to Cork’d and manage both accounts, or will you try to tie those two systems together somehow?

Gary: “I think the Vayniacs and everyone else will see the use. We will have a function that allows people to post a review on Cork’d and allow that review to go right to the WL Forum’s tasting notes, making it a whole 360 experience. My hope is people will see the huge value in using Cork’d though since it will also cellar your wines, keep a wish list, ect.”

The Cork’d blog (currently going through some DNS issues) has been silent for awhile, and never really took off. Do you see this as having more potential than just a random post every now and then? Do you have any plans for the Cork’d blog? I know you have a wine related blog already – can they be tied together somehow or will they remain separate?

Gary: “Not sure on this front but I think this is Cork’d's voice and it needs to be talkative. We mostly want to share thoughts and interact, I’m sure we will explore all possibilities.”

I’m a big proponent of blogging so I hope to see some of Cork’d's future plans, updates, and community efforts verbalized through their blog and on WLTV.

What will the JETS record be this year now that you’ve gone to the draft?

Gary: “16-0 with an easy win over the EAGLES;) honestly the 1st 2 games are brutal but a 10-6 is possible for sure!”

I’m pretty sure that jab is directed at Chris but I’ll let him respond.

Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions Gary. Personally I look forward to the developments that are sure to come in the near future to tie all of these great things together and really help us change the wine world one day at a time.

Additional coverage

There has been a pretty good amount of coverage since this acquisition was announced. Dan Cederholm and Dan Benjamin both wrote some really great background on the entire deal. Read Cederholm’s post and Benjamin’s post on their personal blogs. CenterNetworks was the first to get wind of this deal, but without having all the specifics they covered only the redesign of Wine Library TV’s main site. I’m thinking that someone over there is definitely doing their job. Mashable covered the actual deal but failed to get into many specifics and even got a few of their facts wrong. I think it is interesting to see, when you have inside knowledge of a “deal”, just how accurate some of these stories are (or are not). All in all I think the best coverage comes from those that keep their ear to the ground, are willing to ask for information before they post it, and strive to get every fact straight before they are willing to publish.

Update: Here is a photo of Gary wearing a Viddler shirt on Digg Nation.

[slug]interview-gary-vaynerchuk[/slug]

Boy am I glad that we waited until the Web 2.0 Expo to do this, since Viddler launched version 2.0 only a day or so before Eddie and I sat down to record an episode of Lunch Meet. This meant I was able to show off Viddler’s latest features instead of just talking about them.

Eddie is one heckuva nice guy and really shows Viddler off well. We had some horrible wi-fi while in the Moscone Center, and we encountered a few bugs and mishaps due to that bandwidth problem, but Eddie did a fantastic job to show off Viddler in its best light. Since this interview there have been numerous bug fixes going on at Viddler (which I’ll note soon enough).

Thanks Eddie and the entire Podtech team for treating us so well. Comments welcome.

[tags]josue salazar, colin devroe, chris fehnel, mike stickel, tug, theubergeeks, interview[/tags]
[slug]tug-interview[/slug]