The Vinquire Chronicles, Vol 1

Oct 26, 2007 |  John (12) |  Founders |  0 comments

I wanted to share with our users some history on Vinquire, including what our overall plan is for the website. This blog will be my soapbox for that purpose -- along with some Vinquire cheerleading occasionally. Check this blog for updates once every week or two.

Vinquire was born out of a desire, 2 years ago, to create a user oriented wine review site. The Web 2.0 social networking space was expanding, and there was nothing for the wine world. However, Andy (the other founder) and I are both engineers, so we couldn't just do a community oriented website; we wanted a search engine.

Search is hi-tech, challenging, and profitable. So we began an attempt to merge our two features; a social networking site along w/ a search engine that mines retailers and wineries for inventories.

The result, after almost 2 years, is top-notch search engine. Most people know the thousand pound gorilla of wine search is Wine-Searcher. However, Wine-Searcher is tricky; if you don't pay their subscriber fee, they significantly limit search results by only displaying wines from paying sponsors. Vinquire displays every result, for free, every time. Even comparing Vinquire against the paid version of Wine-Searcher, we frequently beat their results.

Every week, we download millions and millions of web pages, use extremely advanced artificial intelligence to mine those pages for wine, then cluster and display results for our users to peruse. Because of this hi-tech search engine backing, Vinquire can do more than other wine community sites. We can help you find rare bottles and we know average bottle prices, so you can see if you're getting a good deal at your local retailer. And, we never require users to enter a wine name; we already know all the wine names!

There's a lot more that we do. But I won't go off the deep end in my first blog. The reality is, we still have a lot of work to do, but Vinquire is growing in users and employees - keep an eye on us over the next 6 months as we launch new features and rev up our marketing engine. Talk soon -

John Kleven
Founder, Vinquire.com

Founders

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Pictures & Profiles

Oct 26, 2007 |  Vinquire (14) |  News & Updates |  0 comments

Another site update, hot of the presses from the wee hours of Friday morning. Per usual, our search results should be even better. Secondly (and this is really cool), users can now upload a picture of themselves that will be displayed next to their reviews -- lets get some faces to go with those names!

Additionally, each user now has a public profile; a page which displays your reviews and your karma for the rest of the world to see. Now you can see what other users have been reviewing, and maybe even find a tasting buddy with a similar palate. There are also new city and zip code fields in your profile, as well as some controls to limit what information is publicly displayed.

As always, if you find bugs or need help using a feature, please don't hesitate to contact us and tell us what we can do better. Thanks for using Vinquire and enjoy.

News & Updates

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New Beta Release

Oct 03, 2007 |  Vinquire (14) |  News & Updates |  0 comments

As you may have noticed, Vinquire.com got a facelift! And along with our simple, easy-to-use feel, we offer what we think is an even easier way to search the largest wine price comparison database on the internet. You can now:

Find more wines smarter

Our AI now condenses down wine name variations to bring you what you want cleaner. And you're still able to find the bottle you want at the best price.

Vote review helpfulness

Users can weigh in on how useful other reviewers' comments have been. Maybe you'll find a reviewer you agree with, or not. These votes contribute to a wine's WineRank and affect Vinquire's wine recommendations.

And here's a little horn-tooting. Did you know that Vinquire crawls and indexes over 4 million wine retailer pages? And that we search constantly in order to deliver the most current, up-to-date wine prices? It’s just another way that Vinquire is bringing our users the best way to find, review, and buy wine ... for free!

Post your comments now, and thanks as always for using Vinquire.com.

News & Updates

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