News & Reference

2011 Annual Report to the Membership

Community News

Scott Crawford   |   Saturday, December 31 2011

Beer :  The nectar of the gods, the world's oldest alcoholic beverage, and the world's social lubricant... now Socially Modern.

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2011 proved to be a great year for the BeerLovers.com project, having seen the initial stages of concept formation all the way through the raising of the under-construction curtain page. As a new entry into the perhaps crowded online beer community space, let me take a moment to explain what this project is all about and what makes it different.

Envisioned as an enabling platform for beer enthusiasts, at its core BeerLovers.com is being built upon a state-of-the-art, socially-enabled foundation that is both scalable and extendable. What does that mean and why is it important?

Platform Features

The scalability allows the system to rapidly adapt to growth in the user base and does so in a manner that allows you, the Membership, to build or take part in your own ecosystems of activity. As a registered Member you are free to start any and as many groups as you wish and then take full responsibility for administering those groups and cultivating their activity and content. Have a special interest in collecting beer cans or labels? Would you like to start a local group to host beer tasting events or take part in brewery tours? Are you a member of a home brewing club that is looking to establish a socially-enabled online presence? Or maybe you’re a brewer, bartender, or restaurant owner looking to connect with others in the industry? The groups you start can be public or private, invite-only or open to anyone having a registered account, and then you get to choose which applications make the most sense to keep your group’s followers engaged.

And that’s where the extendability comes into play. The underlying architecture allows for the development of beer-oriented social applications that can take full advantage of the built-in social features - features such as the lead / follow / mutual relationship patterns, the flexible privacy settings for content and profiles, the ability for comments to propagate along relationships to facilitate communication and discovery, or the geolocation features that might allow for location-based functionality or recommendations. Imagine homebrew recipes that can be hosted privately within a group or shared publicly and commented upon, commercial beer listings that allow you to keep track of your favorites or share recommendations with others or let your brewery’s or bar’s followers know what’s now available, or even person-to-person classified listings or branded merchandise items for sale that can be discovered through the social channels that develop. As a registered Member of BeerLovers.com you will have an opportunity to help shape custom tools such as these from the bottom up.

Where Things Currently Stand

The foundation for this potential is now in place. Currently up and running are the base-level components for the person profiles and group profiles, along with the ability to host discussions and share photos within the groups. Accompanying these core components are the ability to extend invitations to join your groups and a feature that allows you to connect your personal BeerLovers.com profile or the profile(s) of your group(s) to your respective Facebook or Twitter accounts.

And of course the Featured Contributors are here to provide weekly posts to keep you entertained, help you stay up-to-date with current news, and provide insightful reference information that can help you advance your interests or achievements in the particular aspects of beer you care about most. As the community grows additional Featured Contributors will join to cover a range of important subjects that serve the interests of the community, and I will aim to provide at the minimum quarterly updates similar to this one in order to keep you informed as to how the community has been developing.

Looking Forward

Short term priorities for the new year include the development of the Industry Member profiles which will link to a directory of brewers, beer and homebrew stores, and serving establishments and enable them to interact and share announcements within the community. Additionally a system to capture industry-relevant press releases is currently being evaluated to further help keep community Members informed, and the foundations of the BeerLovers.com Marketplace platform are being planned as well.

On the horizon the focus will turn to deployment of a system for events management along with an ability for groups to host their own blogs. Your input in helping shape these features is of course highly valued and very much appreciated.

Very Special Thanks

Every project displays the combined expression of the diverse range of talents that help it take shape and BeerLovers.com is no different. Very special thanks go out to Rastin Mehr and Arash Sanieyan, “hackerpreneurs” and co-founders and architects of the Anahita social engine. The patient support they each provided as BeerLovers.com took shape went beyond anything that could have been expected.

Additional thanks go to Travis Drake of 3rd I.D. for helping to establish the design direction and identity of BeerLovers.com, and to Talia Cohen of TACN Studio for her help in taking that direction and identity to the beautifully integrated experience you see as you look around the site.

And finally, let me thank The B’Oracle for his ongoing counsel as the project progressed from concept to reality and also to The All Grain Brewer and The Beer Fox, each of whom took an early interest in the project and perhaps a little risk in helping it come to life.

Happy 2012 fellow BeerLovers!

Scott Crawford
Founder