Written by I won’t have a chance to get everyone an update on wider life for a few more days at the least (things are busy both professionally and personally, well definitely personally) but I was sad to see that social media darling Gary V has chosen to close Cork’d.
It’s an interesting situation on a number of levels and not simply because it appears to be Gary’s first significant failure in the wine industry. Originally a pet project of web developer Dan Benjamin and designer Dan Cederholm the site was created as a way to allow people to share tasting notes and wine recommendations Web 2.0 style. Gary V of Wine Library fame came into the picture and people had huge hopes for a site which everyone rightfully thought would compete with and likely replace Cellartracker.
It didn’t work out for one reason or another, despite a number of GREAT ideas by the folks at Cork’d, especially Jon Troutman who has shown himself to be one of the most professional and educated wine writers in the field today. I liked the idea of bringing in bloggers to help create content, which seemed to add a level of interest to the site while offering free content and the SEO benefits which came with it.
Along with everyone else, I’ll be interested to see where Gary V and the rest of the Cork’d team land. Their next project will be an interesting one, but unseating Cellartracker grows more difficult by the day.
