by Conor Friedersdorf
Over at Whiskey Party, there's a post up detailing an industry backlash against whiskey bloggers:
According to Forbes (ironically a whisky blogger himself for online retailer The Whisky Exchange), whisky bloggers are social misfits harboring grudges and hurling insults from the bowels of their parents’ basement. Yet they are also “shameless bootlickers” happy to write a good review in exchange for free samples and a chance to climb their way into the industry. They are disproportionately powerful techno-geeks capable of warping the Google rankings for their own nefarious purposes. Yet they are also insignificant know-nothings, and a flash-in-the-pan best ignored by our betters.
They are self-styled digital emperors, unfairly breaking the industry’s tidy monopoly on criticism & marketing, in which, “only a few years ago there were only a few people to keep happy: a long-established coterie compromising a handful of 5-star hotel managers and a few highly-qualified specialist journos.”
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? If the whiskey world is anything like the journalism world, the blogs are here to stay. The balance of the post explains how technology is changing the spirits industry.