June 2013. New features announcement!

Time to let these cats outta the bag! Some shiny new features have gone live on the platform over the last week or so. Like any good relationship, new code takes a while to bed. We think it's close to bedding time :)

Without further ado. Here are 3 big new things that you can explore on Real Time Wine.

#1 Activity Stream
See what your friends are drinking, rating, reviewing, voting on and more. It's a social filter to what the Latest tab used to be. What's more - if you want to go outside your friendship circle. Play around with the My City tab and the Near Me tab. Cities are especially interesting as they tend to develop slightly different drinking cultures - usually because of availability.

#2 Specials
We see big things in this feature's future. Essentially it allows Wine Fans and Brands to attach content to a specific location. This content could be a price special (eg. Nitida Sauvignon Blanc 2012 is on special at Pick 'n Pay for Rx.xx) or a notification of a special event (eg. The City Bowl Wine Market open Thursdays, ticket price Rx.xx).

The thinking behind this module is the derived demand nature of wine. We don't tend to plan to buy wine. We buy it "on the way somewhere". On the way home. On the way to a dinner. This behaviour requires a little one touch "see what's on special around me" magic.

In the beginning, we're going to need some help populating this database. So when you walk into your favourite wine retailer, snap some pictures of well priced wine and upload them onto the app. 5 points for every special you load - great way to catch up on the Leaderboard!

# Golden Tickets
Our favourite of the three... but something you're going to have to work a little harder and wait a little more to experience. Remember Charlie & The Chocolate Factory? Remember the 10 Golden Tickets Willy Wonka put into the chocolate bars? Remember the feeling when you were a kid, opening up a chocolate bar, just hoping there might be something behind it? Well - we want to recreate that feeling with wine!

Golden Tickets allows Brands to attach content (eg. food pairings, fun facts, discount vouchers, free wine, invites to events, campaign activations and more) to specific bottles of wine. It's part surprise-and-delight, part treasure hunt - part amazing moment to talk to a consumer of wine during the "moment of consumption".

It'll be fun, watch this space :)

So that's it from us for now. Go play around. We're hard at work doing some optimisation to speed up the app a bit and fixing little creepy crawlies as they show their ugly heads. One of those creepy crawlies (read: bugs) was login using social accounts. This should be MUCH smoother.

IMPORTANT THOUGH. Please go to the Account Settings page, look under Social Networks and check that Facebook and Twitter are correctly link (if they are, you'll see an option to unlink - if they aren't you need to relink). Early users must do this to re-authorise the social accounts. Sorry. But sometimes these social thingies are outta our control!

In the mean time... you, yes YOU - go grab a glass of wine, check in, review it and be happy!

Much love,
Wino Andy.