WHAT THE NEW SOCIAL MEDIA MEANS FOR US WINOS

Thanks to my ever-growing Internet social circle, including all the local bloggers (I love you guys - and girl!), other bloggers around the country and the globe, and all my peeps on Facebook, and tweets on Twitter, I have found a new frontier on which to trudge my demented commentary out from the twisted confines of my grape-stained brain and splash them all over the masses. I love this whole new social media thing, because I am able to interact with people from anywhere in the world, and I feel, if only for a moment, like I am right in the room with them.

What does this mean for wine? There have been a lot of different folks on the Web speak about this new concept of using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln, Flickr, MySpace, Open Wine Consortium and various other social media web sites as a new means of connecting with current and potential customers, as well as creating a very dynamic, interactive arena in which to exchange thoughts, customer comments, and otherwise engage each other in the conversations of all things wine.

Thanks to folks like Lisa de Bruin (of WineDiverGirl), Steve Heimoff (from the Wine Enthusiast) and Dale Cruse (Drinks Are On Me), the stage is set for a whole new experience in wine discussion and adventure. I've even learned that some retail stores are actually making use of Twitter and other social median as a way of marketing specials, advertising discounts, and engaging their clientele economically, not just socially. That's cool. Here's to the new guerrilla marketing plan.

P.S. Huge thanks to Dale at Drinks Are On Me for listing me amongst all the Twittering winos out there. There's a helluva lot of us now so it's nice to make the list.