WineNews: 2.8 million users on the website and in 2020 boom of followers on social networks

2020, the “annus horribilis”, is finally over and it was totally the worst year ever for WineNews as well, but at the same time, one of the best. It goes without saying that no one would have ever expected a year like the one that is, finally, over, which tried to prevent us from doing our job as we should, narrating wines and producers, tasting the wines and meeting them “on the field”, in their territories. However, 2.8 million users (+ 151% compared to 2019), connected to the website, plus the boom of followers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & YouTube, has registered fantastic data for our work. These first 20 years of being online and providing daily information about the wine, agriculture, wine tourism and catering worlds (or communication of wine & food, as we like to call it), is powered today, more than ever, by social networks, making a more exciting and direct difference and successfully keeping the sector united and connected. We don't want to celebrate ourselves, quite the contrary. And, celebrating milestones is even less important in this challenging moment that our world and we are experiencing, due to the Covid19 emergency. However, a year has ended and a new one has just arrived, in which we hope that even before the word "wine", the most clicked word is "vaccine", making us reflect on the future and on where we need to aim to move forward with our work.
Twenty years of work online came about from an intuition that led to founding WineNews on the threshold of the third Millennium, and which over time has evolved using different mediums and following their innovation. Entering into the world of social networks is an aspect that has now become an integral part of our digital “ecosystem” of daily information. Two years ago, in April 2018, we joined Facebook, and today we have 57.761 followers. Then, in August 2019, we opened our Instagram profile, the youngest of the social networks, which, in just 16 months, has already reached 30.278 followers. Subsequently, the social universe has been completed with Twitter, now a veteran, with its 21.706 followers, alongside the video channel on YouTube.
“I would like to thank the readers, first of all, for these outstanding results, and then the indispensable work of an excellent team of collaborators of a media created in the 2000s to be only online”, said Alessandro Regoli, WineNews director, and its founder together with Irene Chiari, “and that have followed the technological evolution of contents and possibilities in the idea of narrating wine, food and everything that revolves around them, informing and reaching as wide an audience as possible. Today, the web is discovering digital alternatives also to the events and stories in the wine world, including tastings, conferences and interviews, all only online. This is the demonstration of its versatility. But, we are definitely convinced that fieldwork cannot and must not be replaced. To be able to capture all the thousand facets that a territory, a wine, a product, a dish have, takes on-the-spot experience and knowledge, which no platform can ever replace. This is why the philosophy of WineNews is, and always will be, to work, day by day, as reporters, and recount the entirety, the beauty and the richness of the wine, agriculture, wine tourism and catering worlds, as faithfully as possible. We will continue and return to doing just this, we hope, as soon as possible, knowing full well that they represent key assets for our country’s economy”.
It is an important milestone, at the end of a challenging year, made up of positive numbers that are not the arrival, but a launch pad towards new challenges to be met in 2021. The goal of WineNews will continue to be telling about a world that has seen changes in shape, interests and main players, but that definitely remains beautiful.