European Wine Bloggers Conference

Doug Cook is the head of Twitter’s search initiatives, the creator of Able Grape, a soon to be two time EWBC attendee, and above all else, Doug is a great friend. At the EWBC, Doug will be on the panel “Social Media to Better Reach Your Readers”, where he’ll discuss how the online wine publishing world is changing.

We’re excited to have him back in Europe for the EWBC, and with Doug’s recent jump into Twitter search, we felt participants would appreciate to learn more about his recent adventures.

1. After last year’s EWBC we have become a huge fan of both you and your work with Able Grape. But as a  year has come and gone, we’d love to know what has changed at Ablegrape and what features people should know about?

First, thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you are finding Able Grape useful. The biggest changes in the last year have been behind the scenes – the relevance of results has gotten quite a bit better, and the database is far larger and more complete: at last count there were more than 41,000 websites in the index, and about 23 million pages of content.

2. We to congratulate you on your new position as head of search for Twitter! Great news! So what you can tell us about the future of Twitter search and how this position might affect your work at Able Grape?

Well, I can’t say too much publicly about Twitter Search except that we have a fantastic team and I’m really excited to be a part of it. I’m also excited about what we’re building – search is key to Twitter and we’re working on making it a much more compelling experience. Because I’m mostly focused on Twitter these days, Able Grape is a labor of love I maintain in my spare time. It will continue to be uniquely useful, and to grow and update, though perhaps not as quickly as before. The major improvements I’ve been planning will eventually happen, but for now I’ve put them on the back burner.

3. Seeing how Twitter has become an integral part of the online wine world, how do you think your work at Twitter might help those of us working with wine online?

I became a huge fan of Twitter long before working at the company, because I found it connected me very quickly and organically with people with shared interests, concerns, and points of view (and sometimes people with opposing points of view, which is also great). By building a better, more compelling search experience we’ll be helping you find information faster, connect more quickly with relevant people in the wine industry, and help interested people find you and your tweets.

4. Over the years, you have clearly learned a significant amount from your experience building Able Grape. What lessons from

Ablegrape do you think might apply to Twitter search?

This is going to sound kind of lame, but I’m using pretty much everything I’ve learned. Working at Inktomi and Yahoo! for a number of years taught me about building large-scale search engines, and building Able Grape was an entrepreneurial and creative endeavor, tackling something that seemed impossible at the start and just doing it. Twitter is a bit like that: on one hand, it’s one of the world’s largest search engines, on the other it’s a relatively small team, with a lot of passion and creativity, tackling some very hard and exciting problems that haven’t been solved elsewhere.

5. You have told us on several occasions that you loved last year’s conference, a compliment we don’t take lightly, but what makes this year’s conference intriguing or exciting for you?

Well, the thing I’m most looking forward to is seeing the great people I met last year, getting to know new people, spending time discussing the wine world, the online world, tasting, and who knows, perhaps even drinking a little wine together. I’m also excited that the conference is in Portugal. I’ve only briefly been to Portugal before (to Buçaco) and can’t wait to experience a bit of Lisbon.

6. We’ve tasted some pretty amazing gems from your private cellar, but what we don’t is your expereince with Portuguese wine, and what are you looking forward to taste at the conference this year?

Though some of the best wines I’ve ever had are Portuguese (I’m a HUGE fan of old Madeira), the spectrum of Portuguese wines I’ve had is rather narrow, mostly limited to the obvious Port and Madeira (though I did have some fascinating old wines at the Palace Hotel in Buçaco on my one other visit). I like unique, off-the-beaten path wines. Portugal has a wealth of characterful native grape varieties. I’m excited to try lesser-known, good, inexpensive table wines made from these – the kind of wines I like to drink every day. Very few of them make it to the States so I’m really looking forward to learning a lot more.