Nowadays, there’s definitely a long tail for social networks. So, it was no surprise to hear that there was an app that allowed wine enthusiasts to connect to one another. As someone who enjoys a glass or two – when I’m out of beer – I figured I’d give it a shot and see how many winos I could connect with.
What’s inside the bottle:
The Grapevine basically revolves around 3 major themes: news, personal wine journal, sharing wine experiences with friends.
Wine Geek – This tab contains articles and tips around wine. At launch there were 5 articles. I’m not sure if this is original content or is borrowed from another blog or periodical. I did find the content to be well written and educational (ex. “Find Wines on a Budget”).
Friends – Thankfully, I received a default friend in the app. Her name is Leah Hennessy and she’s The Grapevine host. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any of my friends. I cross-referenced a few friends that are wine enthusiasts with iPhones and came up empty. I think the app is still in its infancy and really needs a friend finder.
Wines: This is where you create a log of the wines you like, dislike, tasted, etc. You can add an image, audio or video (20 sec max) for your share. You’ll also need to fill-in the winery, name, price, type of wine, country, color, year and a required note about your experience. A lot of detail here, but that shouldn’t be an issue for anyone truly interested in learning and sharing stories about wine. You can also create lists to store your wines by category: Red, White, Favorites, Shopping List, etc.
The Vine: This is where you make use of the wines you’ve saved and the real sharing comes to life. It’s actually a cool feature and could be quite fun once The Grapevine reaches a critical mass. Here you “share” the wines stored in the app and receive “shares” from your friends. Sharing is quite easy and it can be a fun way to share your a new Shiraz with a friend you know is a fan.
More: There’s not much on this tab. Just a few options to toggle sound, edit profile, choose 1 of 2 themes and add friends.
More wine, hold the cheese:
The more time I spent using The Grapevine, the more the functionality and design really disappointed me. There are some crucial things missing and some of the layout choices made me think this app was designed after one glass too many.
1. The purple title bar with the “here’s what you do on this screen” text is not a marketing or app store screenshot, they seriously put that in the app. Honestly, this one literally made me laugh when I saw it was really part of the app.
2. There’s a lot of stuttering in the app. When trying to enter in my wine “share” in the app, it kept freezing up during typing. I’d have to wait for the app to catch up to my typing. Not good if you’re expecting folks to fill-in a lot of required fields.
3. This is a big one: there is no functionality to find or import friends from any source (contact list, Twitter, Facebook, etc). The only way to find a friend is to search by name or add a friend by typing in their e-mail address. Now maybe I’m just spoiled on every other app in existence but this was just silly to leave out. If you want me to grow your network, you need to give me the tools to do so.
Summary:
Overall, I like the idea behind The Grapevine and where the developer is trying to take it…I just don’t think it’s there yet. There’s a lot of (what I consider) basic functionality missing and the layout is a bit cheesy. There is potential though. If the folks behind The Grapvine are serious on bringing iPhone winos together, then I look forward to future releases. Until then, CHEERS!
The Grapevine is available for free in the App Store.
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TAGS: iphone apps
