You know a technology is successful when you start seeing it all over the place. Most of my favorite French wine and food or lifestyle magazines now have an iPhone app, making searching for a recipe or a match with a wine a lot easier.

It happened that one of the most respected and widely read wine sites, Natdecants.com, just launched a new version of its app available for Blackberry as well as iPhone, DrinksMatcher. Who doesn’t know Natalie MacLean? Just for those a little distracted, let me remind them that Natalie is an independent journalist and author of the bestseller Red, White and Drunk All Over. Her site, NatDecants.com, is a resource for all wine and food lovers. Natalie has won four James Beard Journalism Awards, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. At the World Food Media Awards in Australia, she was named the World’s Best Drinks Writer.

The first version of her free mobile app worked well. The new version is much enhanced. It includes 380,000 food and wine pairings and thousands of wine reviews. You can search the reviews by winery, price, score, region, grape, vintage, food match, check how many bottles of a particular wine are in local liquor stores or search a directory of 10,000+ wineries to buy wine or plan a visit.

It is always exciting to see a new technology, 100% user-centered taking off and being adopted by more and more businesses. It is so positive to see entrepreneurs, such as Natalie MacLean, ready to make the investment in a new technology and not charging the consumers for this new level of service. Thanks to all those customer-driven entrepreneurs who make the world such an exciting place to be!

Next week I’ll be on my way to the European Wine Bloggers Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. I’m one of the lucky one who’ll get to speak twice – once on Social Wine Brand and the second time on the Future of the Social Wine Brand.

But what is exactly the social wine brand? More and more winery owners are getting aware of the importance of social media to reach their consumers. They start writing blogs, create a page on Facebook and an account on Twitter. Those are great initiatives but they’re far from being as efficient as they could be. Indeed being part of a social media network means a lot more. It means interfacing with other wine professionals – even peers – and, of course, consumers. One of the weaknesses of the European wine network is the lack of communication and cooperation between winery owners and wine makers. Europe is more individualistic and competitive than its New World friends – i.e. Americans, Australians or South Americans. It impairs the launching of efficient networks. Indeed, networks require trust and sharing information and tips. Europeans are usually more retentive and don’t give away information or tip to an unknown party.

Is there a solution for this situation? Yes, we see in Europe innovative initiatives coming from wine makers who understood how working together (and not against each other) is important. The French “Mes Vignes” network is one of the best examples. Several winemakers from various French producing regions got together to offer wine lovers the opportunity to rent some vines for a year and create their own wine. In Cahors, the wine makers “banded” together to promote their wines in the US through blogs and buzz marketing. I’m sure other countries have many success stories they’ll share during this panel on social wine brands.

Blogging is certainly one of the best social media a winery can develop. But it is not enough to write posts on the state of the vine or how the wine is doing in the vat or in the barrel. The blog needs to bring value to the winery or the shop owner by creating a special relationship with the final consumer. The blogger needs to create links with other bloggers by sharing information, giving away ideas or starting interesting discussions. Topics can vary. I recently read a discussion on Facebook initiated by David Corey on : “would you rather buy high priced wine discounted or small production wines with consistenly fair pricing? let’s say $29 and under?” The question is a very good example of the kind of topics consumers are passionnate about: over 30 people answered and commented upon each other’s comments.

Don’t hesitate either to join professional networks such as OpenWineConsortium or LinkedIn with its Wine 2.0 or Wine Business section. Be proactive, create relationship and emotion around your brand. Comment on other people blogs, give away information to help somebody, get involved in discussions you are interested in – “just do it” or “think differently” but whatever you chose to do, do it in a spirit of cooperation and with an open mind.

This is the very unusual sight I came across today. At first the title of the article read: “Wine for women”. I got mildly annoyed and was about to move away when a sentence caught my eye: “Every smile has a story. And many stories are shared over a glass of wine”. Banal? Yes, but true. In our days of bad news, a smile is to be treasured preciously.

Back to wine! SmileVino is a weird but touching try to reach people through the best of their heart. Each label depicts a woman smiling. Each smile carries a different emotion: compassion, accomplishment, whatever. The back label tells the story behind the smile. What about the wine? There are two bottles – one of Merlot and one of Chardonnay, both from California. My feeling is that the wine is just the messenger for woman’s charities in various communities in spite of Nancy Moore, vice-president, affirmation: “Our signature Chardonnay and Merlot were specially created in California and offer a fresh taste for wine lovers.”

I like the positive side of the story: smile, telling a positive story, giving back to the community. But why only women and why so little on the wines?

I have a couple of issues with gender marketing applied to the wine business. First, many studies showed clearly that women don’t have special attraction to “feminine” wines, such as pink or sweet wines. Second, women are now learned in wine: they know what they like and what they want to buy. Last but not least, they are usually sharp shoppers and detect easily the false bargain or the marketing trick. Because let’s be honest and even brutal: a wine designed for women is usually poorly made – too sweet, heavy, poorly balanced. Give us real wines – with a smile, yes but also a wine that will bring a smile to our face!