Harvard Study Finds Median Number of Lifetime Tweets is One

I knew I shoulda gone to Harvard Business School. An article in the Harvard Business Review concludesgo to harvard business review post exactly what I have been saying to anyone who will listen to me.  Twitter resembles more of a one-way broadcast medium than a social network. That’s why it’s such a favorite with PR types, because it’s much more what old school PR looks like. The only difference is that the blasts are concise,  and yes, you do have to get people to follow you.  But the bottom line is you can send the message you choose without  building much of a relationship.  

And is it me, or are the almost hourly tweets that arrive throughout the day a la Gary Vanynerchuk  kind of annoying? (I finally had to turn him off.) 

In the words of the study’s  authors, Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski,  the fact that 10% of Twitter users account for 90% of the tweets,  " implies that Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.”   Even more damning, “A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely. Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.” The ratio of Twitter tweeters to Twitter "users" is even smaller than Wikipedia contributors to users. Hmmm, can that be right? 

I still think Twitter is interesting – especially in concert with Monitter – a site where you can see what others are twittering on a given topic – or two or three or four. That might be a more potent marketing tool - one which involves listening not talking.

The study also discusses the gender differences in who follows whom, but I think the real story is that Twitter is often the kind of a one-way communication that was supposed to die with the advent of social media. 

Thomas Jefferson's Claret

These days I can't wait to eat a hasty dinner and immediately tuck into The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace.  It's about a cache of 1787 Chateau Lafite, once owned by Thomas Jefferson, that was discovered after being sealed in cellar for two hundred years. Or was it?   The book is a delicious mix of ancient Bordeaux, antiquties trading and fakery -  all tied up in a page turner I can't put down.   Here's an example.  This quote from André Tchelistcheff is not new, but I've never seen it rendered so entertainingly:  

At one of the a Heublein auctions run by Broadbent, the four-foot-eleven Tchelistcheff had sampled the old wine and told the room, in his emigre's Russian accent, "Tasting old wine is like making love to an old lady." After a dramatic pause, he had continued, "It is possible." After another pause: "It can even be enjoyable." Then, following one last sip: "But it requires a leetle bit of imagination."

--Benjamin Wallace, The Billionaire's Vinegar  

There's more stories - like the one about the mammoth sigh of relief breathed by Wine Spectator owner, Marvin Shanken  when he LOST the bidding for the "Th J" etched Lafite. Or the one about a consesiour and his wife, lapping antique wine from the kitchen floor after an accidental break. And then there's the collector who intends to show off a precious 19th century Bordeaux at a prestigious tasting...until it starts to leak. 

Fred Franzia: A Different Sort of Wine Story

I just read Dana Goodyear’s article about Fred Franzia in the New Yorker, “Drink Up: The Man Behind Two Buck Chuck."  I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know, and that in itself is suspect. Is this the on-message story of a savvy and disciplined PR practitioner?

Geez, he even has his own website, named, what else - FredFranzia.com.

Here’s Fred's story:

He’s big.

He’s rich.

He’s profane.

Not funny profane. Just profane. About his daughter’s bathroom in a house he is building: “Low windows there so no one can peek at her titties.”

And he runs his 20 million case operation out of a trailer in the Central Valley.

I agree with Karen MacNeil who is quoted in the article, “There’s a phrase in wine education- there are Wednesday-night wines and then there are Sunday-night wines. They make Sunday-night wines in the Napa Valley, but every vintner in this valley would argue that we all need Wednesday-night wines. Franzia should just leave it at that-say, ‘I make Wednesday-night wines. I’m not going to be making the Armani suit, I’m going to be the clothes purveyor to Target.” Instead he suggest that there’s somehow no valid premise for expensive wines.”

I’ve been drinking Wednesday night wine (not Franzia’s!) while reading about first-growth Bordeaux this week. Blech. I gotta tell you, sometimes even on a Wednesday, you need to open up the Sunday-night wine.

Pour on Randall Grahm

The New York Times devoted a lot of ink and photos to Eric Asimov's feature on Randall Grahm. According to my sources (OK, source) Asimov's reporting was dead on.  A friend of mine who worked for Bonny Doon in the mid-90s says Randall was a loveable and eccentric boss.  Generous, brilliant and easily bored.   She was a self-described "flunky" working in compliance, and his plethora of wines - at least 30 at the time, made her job complicated, to say the least.  She said he would develop a few wines that were really, really good. But then he would get bored. Thus the 30 wines.   I saw Grahm in action at a closure symposium at Copia last year. Yes, a closure symposium. Only in Napa, right?   Asimov's description of Randall as " an aging hippie who found a way to prolong graduate school indefinitely, at someone else’s expense" is apt. I think I described him as looking like your favorite philosophy professor, so same difference.  He is very articulate and a joy to listen to.  The other guys who spoke were marketing types, all PowerPoint and power suits.  Randall was the real thing - an eccentric, passionate, thoughtful genius.   Never mind his genius is for marketing. 

Locovores Be Damned, Wine Drinking in Honduras

 Note: A recent two-week sojourn in Honduras gave me a chance to think - about wine, about technology, about stuff.  In a sensory evaluation class a few years ago, the teacher said, only somewhat faciciously, that the best wine pairing for Thai food is a cold beer. Ditto for almost any cusine of Honduras.    In April it is so hot that you either swim or walk very, very slowly. Bananas, pineapples and coconuts grow in your garden and rum is cheap and plentiful.    So why would anyone reach for a glass of wine when locovore logic would lean toward a fruity rum drink?  I dunno, but I guess I passed the wino test, because after a week I really did yearn for a glass of wine.  At the lovely La Casa de Copan B&B, Sid, our guide and friend, brought us Chilean Savignon Blanc (Verremonte?)  on hot afternoons. It was the perfect thing to drink while swinging softly in a Honduran hammock.