BRATTLEBORO — It's too late for Circuit City, but the emerging and emerged social media should help spike sales of new computer keyboards and laptops.
That's because there's no question that more and more beer is being spilled into computer keyboards around the world.
I have not a single statistic to prove this, or even suggest it. But I know from personal experience that people are hunkering around their computers while drinking beer and writing about drinking beer on Facebook, in blogs, and particularly on Twitter. Except on Twitter one doesn't write about beer; one “tweets” about it.
I wish I could assume that all readers of this paper know what I'm talking about. But less than a year ago, I wouldn't have known what I'm talking about.
I blame it all on my good friend, Jerry Carbone, who loves checking out new computer applications that he can put to use, usually to the cause of the Brooks Memorial Library, where he is the director. He often calls them to my attention, and then I either 1) ignore them or 2) try them out and become addicted.
Jerry, and a few other people, had long ago invited me to be their “friends” on Facebook. I ignored them. Three months ago, I succumbed. Now I have 92 friends on Facebook.
But first I joined Twitter, as anyone can, by heading over to twitter.com and signing in. Then the process began of "following" people and/or "being followed" by them - all of it completely voluntary. I had been invited by Jerry, so I followed him back and invited a few of the people he followed; that's how it starts. Now I'm following about 150 people, and 200 people are following me (which can be done simply by typing in @tombedell on the Twitter site).
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In theory, in our individual tweets, we're answering the standing question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or fewer, including spaces.
Because of its sheer exponentially growing popularity, Twitter has come in for a fair amount of ridicule, usually by people who haven't tried it and consider it another example of absurd cyber-vanity.
Which it unquestionably can be, as can Facebook, which is the same idea as Twitter without the character limit - one can go on and on in Facebook, download whole photo albums and video and basically document one's every moment, probably waking or sleeping. In both the Facebook and Twitter universes, one always has the choice of being discriminate or promiscuous.
What does it all mean? What's the value of it? At first, I didn't have a clue. Now, I still don't know what it all means, nor do I know its potential value, but I can safely say that it's fascinating, sometimes useful, often time-wasting, and potentially hazardous to my keyboard. Someday I might stop all together.
But that day is not yet here, because in just a short time I've found useful uses for the social media. Thanks to the “search” ability on most of these Internet forums, one can rev up the engine on research (although the telephone remains the great research tool, and showing up in person even better).
Put “beer” into the Twitter search function, and one is off to the races. I was soon chatting with all sorts of beery folks from all over the country I'd never known before. The paradigm that seems to be emerging is enlarging one's community with a healthy dollop of self-promotion.
I've tried to drive traffic to my blog (3guysgolf.com), which is mostly about golf, but unsurprisingly also about beer now and again (check the 1 Guy Drinks section). But, to limit it to beery examples, I've solicited good places to find a good beer while traveling, taken part in an online beer tasting, and made my online video debut. Nothing earthshaking, perhaps, but all new to me in this medium.
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Most of the beer drinking/writing activity online is about craft brewing, beers that eschew corn or rice adjuncts common to mainstream commercial lagers and aim higher. The only way typical American lagers like Budweiser or Coors Light wind up on these sites is, typically, to be flayed and castigated as, basically, watery yellow horse piss.
No one needs any help in finding such insipid beers. But when heading to Orlando in January in my golf-writer mode for the PGA Merchandise Show, I knew I'd have a hard time finding a beer that appealed to me. But a tweet to Ashley Routson, better known as @thebeerwench, saved the day.
Ashley is a new paradigm herself, one of many women who are tweeting and blogging about beer like mad, with personas like the Beer Babe, the Beer Goddess, Beer Chick, the Bier Girl.
The dénouement was that a few fellow golf writers and I wound up at Red Light Red Light in Orlando, which wasn't much on appearance (the word “dive” comes to mind), but indeed had a mind-boggling selection of great craft beers and imports on tap and in bottles.
To top things off, the Beer Wench showed up to tip a few with us - my first Tweetup (meeting a fellow Twitterer). It felt like a watershed moment to me, because nothing about it would have occurred if not for Twitter.
It's no great effort for me to drink a Magic Hat beer, except I had no special reason to in March, when an online Twitter Taste Live came along. Though started by oenophiles, it was quickly adopted by beer aficionados, too. So one midweek evening I sampled four Magic Hat offerings from the comfort of my living room couch with beers and vulnerable laptop on the coffee table.
There were scores of us involved, including brewers from Magic Hat up in Burlington, all tasting and bloviating (limited to 140 characters per tweet) on the brews over the course of two hours, the moderator discussing some of the online comments via a live embedded video feed.
Did this save the world? No, but it was interesting and fun and educational in its own niche way.
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I went the video route again when Tim and Amy Brady of the HerefortheBeer.com Web site set up their gear at Windham Wines, where I was soon to do a tasting of Belgian Trappist ales. “Tim and Tom Talk Trappist” isn't going to play at the multiplex anytime soon, but it's now always available on a computer screen. (And, one hopes, interesting and fun and educational in its own niche way.)
When not being beer nuts, Tim and Amy run the Forty Putney Road Bed and Breakfast in Brattleboro, and they are becoming a youthful force in promoting travel to the area through their other blog, InnBrattleboro, which also makes use of online video. They're experimenting wildly in the social media, but Tim admits he isn't quite sure where it will all wind up, either.
Meanwhile, keep those fingers on the keyboard, and reach for the beer very carefully.