The Oracle Mix Blog

Yay! Our friends in the Events team have decided to add another week to our Vote-a-Session program for Oracle OpenWorld 2009.

We're seeing a lot of traffic coming to the site, and more than 1,000 Mix members have already participated and cast votes for their favorite session ideas.

So, browse the tracks, find your favorites and invite your friends and colleagues to do the same. It looks like the Events team is prepared to pick 35 winning sessions. At this point, that's still in reach for pretty much every proposal. Good luck!

Sharing. It's a core piece of the social web. People share pictures, videos, documents, bookmarks (heck, even words). Social networks like Facebook are built around content sharing among peers.

A bunch of feature ideas on our extended list (the things we've been too busy to get to so far) deal with making your Mix content more shareable.

As a little experiment, we added the AddThis widget to our Vote-a-Session program (which, by the way, has been extended by one week).

Here's how people have used it so far:

Not too much uptake yet, though it did pop up in our Twitter monitoring a few times. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn seem to be the most popular sharing services.

Anyway, do you think this would be helpful if we added it to the general Mix site? Are there any specific services you'd prefer us to try?

Let us know in the comments.

We're getting our storage systems for Oracle Mix upgraded tomorrow night.

Mix will go offline around 10pm Pacific Time on Friday, July 3, and should be back up around 10am Pacific Time on Saturday, July 4.

Thank you for your patience! Enjoy your holiday weekend.

Our latest numbers below:

Registered users

46,611

Active users (percent of total)

These are the highest numbers we've seen so far since we started tracking them earlier this year:

Last 30 days: 6,943 (14.9%)
Last 60 days: 11,236 (24.1%)
Last 90 days: 14,994 (32.2%)

Traffic (30-day)

Visits: 18,009
Page views: 166,689

Twitter

Followers: 1,607

User-generated content (30-day)

New ideas: 22
New questions: 64
New comments: 366

Groups

There are currently 1,175 Mix groups (requires login).

Back in January, we asked: Groups on Mix: What's missing? We reached out to 85 of our group owners, listened to your comments and came up with this summary: Feedback from our group owners

A number of these feature requests have been delivered since then (e.g. content embedding) or are still being worked on (e.g. improved search, ability to notify all group members).

Now we want to get back to hearing what you have on your collective wish list as we head towards Oracle OpenWorld 2009 and beyond.

Do you manage a group on Oracle Mix? If so, please join our newly formed group: Oracle Mix group owners

We will discuss new feature ideas and share successful examples of how Mix is being used for events, campaigns or in other contexts.

As group admins, you are often much closer to what our members experience on Mix than we are. So we'd like to make sure that you have all the tools and know-how available to build and support striving communities.

We're also thinking about doing a weekly chat. Details can be discussed on Mix.

The Video team has been busy working on a new Oracle video player. They've asked us to embed it on our blog for testing purposes.

Check it out:

Please have a look and let us -- and them -- know how it's working for you (make sure to leave your OS and browser information in the comments). Thanks!

Update (2.23pm): As per Andrea's comment below, this is only a beta player that the Digital Media team is using as a "proof of concept" for functional testing within their environment. Just to keep in mind when you find things that aren't quite perfect yet. Thanks!

Another Monday, another look at how Mix is doing in terms of numbers.

Registered users

47,271

Active users (percent of total)

Once again, the highest numbers we've seen since we started tracking:

Last 30 days: 7,510 (15.9%)
Last 60 days: 11,648 (24.6%)
Last 90 days: 15,513 (32.8%)

Traffic (30-day)

Visits: 19,937
Page views: 189,754

Twitter

Followers: 1,680

User-generated content (30-day)

New ideas: 23
New questions: 74
New comments: 395

Groups

There are currently 1,180 Mix groups (requires login).

A bit late but here are last week's Mix metrics.

Registered users

47,643

Active users (percent of total)

Last 30 days: 7,073 (14.8%)
Last 60 days: 11,819 (24.8%)
Last 90 days: 15,688 (32.9%)

Traffic (30-day)

Visits: 17,524
Page views: 153,959

Twitter

Followers: 1,745

User-generated content (30-day)

New ideas: 18
New questions: 78
New comments: 324

Groups

There are currently 1,187 Mix groups (requires login).

The latest numbers for Mix below. Looks like we can seriously start planning for a little meetup to celebrate 50K members, maybe as soon as late August.

Registered users

48,223

Active users (percent of total)

Last 30 days: 6,538 (13.6%)
Last 60 days: 11,776 (24.4%)
Last 90 days: 15,489 (32.1%)

Traffic (30-day)

Visits: 15,874
Page views: 132,705

Twitter

Followers: 1,802

User-generated content (30-day)

New ideas: 23
New questions: 76
New comments: 291

Groups

There are currently 1,196 Mix groups (requires login).

Over the last couple of years, our team has been involved in many discussions around micro-blogging, specifically Twitter, and how it can be put to good use in a corporate (mostly marketing) setting here at Oracle. Needless to say, Twitter has grown very popular with many groups and teams. New accounts are popping up left and right as more and more people are becoming familiar with the social web.

Here are a few numbers for the currently 13 official Twitter accounts (the list is growing by about 1-2 accounts per month).

1. Aggregate growth

2. Top number of "followers" (number of people following Oracle)

There has been steady growth in followers of about 5-8% per week.

oracle: 6,381
oraclemix: 1,802
oraclecrm: 1,686
oracletechnet: 1,115
oracleopenworld: 1,007

3. Top number of "following" (number of people Oracle follows)

oraclecrm: 2,000
oracleopenworld: 624
OracleRetail: 362
oraclemix: 320
oracletechnet: 304

4. Top number of tweets per week

These numbers are based on the ten-week time period May 18 through July 26, 2009.

oracletechnet: 32.9
oraclecrm : 25.6
OracleRetail: 22.8
oracleprofit: 20
oracle: 12.2

5. Top follower-to-following ratio

This ratio indicates the number of followers per every user that Oracle follows. For example, @oracle has more than 6,381 followers but only follows back 11 others (and only Oracle accounts).

oracle: 580.1
oracledatabase: 145.8
oraclemiddle: 60.3
oraclepartners: 57.6
oracleprofit: 14.7

For @oraclemix, our ratio is 5.6 which is a bit more balanced.

* * *

There are a lot more ways to look at Twitter usage (e.g. number of mentions, number of replies, number of re-tweets, number of click-throughs etc.) but we're not tracking these consistently across all acounts yet (it's still a lot of manual labor as we wait for the proper analytics tools to evolve and grow).

There are also a lot of qualitative aspects that we keep an eye on (e.g. tone, customer satisfaction etc.) that may at times be a lot more important than quantitative measures.

Which metrics are right for you depends on your goals, of course, and on the kind of presence you hope to establish on Twitter. You'll note that each of our Twitter channels has different characteristics to best meet the needs of their various audiences and communities.

A while ago, we added the "hot groups" tab. Based on our secret algorithm, we show you which groups are up and coming on Mix at any given time.

Here are the five groups of the week:

• Oracle SOA Suite -- All about SOA Suite: BPEL, ESB, Mediator, Rules, EDN, CEP, WSM, Adapters, ...(826 members)
• ORACLE PARTNERNETWORK (OPN) -- The Oracle PartnerNetwork Group is dedicated to the interests of the OPN Community. The objective of this group is to provide OPN members with a forum where they can connect with other OPN members and share information and experiences; to provide an interactive communications channel with... (266 members)
• E-Business Suite -- Group dedicated to discussing issues, sharing ideas and communicating about the Oracle E-Business Suite (1618 members)
• SUN / Oracle Public Sector (8 members)
• Oracle Certification -- This group is for all holding Oracle Certified Professional (OCP), Oracle Certified Expert (OCE), Oracle Certified Associate (OCA), and Oracle Certified Master (OCM) credentials, as well as those pursuing their certification. A forum to share exam preparation tips, study materials, practice... (465 members)

View the complete list here: Oracle Mix hot groups