Update (8:50AM PT, Sept 17) - Look for Oracle.com homepage goodness this Friday!
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Starting Tuesday, Sept. 9sometime the week of Sept. 815, the Oracle.com homepage will look like no other corporate Website you've ever seen.
You read that right. Starting tomorrowthis week, visitors to www.oracle.com will be greeted with a simple UI that has only one purpose: to gather ideas from the user community, about any aspect of Oracle. (No registration is required for submitting ideas directly to Oracle, but if you want to share those ideas with other visitors so they can be voted up/voted down - or if you want a response from Oracle - an oracle.com account is required.)
You'll see this version of the homepage for a short time; during that time, you can always opt to skip through to the classic Oracle homepage. After the "return" of the classic homepage, you will have access to this program through a homepage widget until the end of Oracle OpenWorld.
The platform involved, of course, is Oracle Mix - the Oracle-specific social network that has served as an "ideas factory" for nearly a year. However, as part of this program, Oracle executives will now be directly involved, responding to ideas or feedback in their respective areas. (Look for the "Experts" tab in Oracle Mix to see their answers.) Don't expect to see many of them chime in during OpenWorld however; most of their participation will be post-conference.
Internally, we've been informally calling this program "Shock & Awe", for obvious reasons. What better way to illustrate our developing commitment to transparency, than to replace our standard brochureware with a social media experience? (See Groundswell author Charlene Li's take here; Enterprise Irregular Vinnie Mirchandani was pre-briefed as well, at a Friday dinner I regrettably missed due to a family engagement.)
Let me try to anticipate some of your questions.
Justin, where did this crazy idea come from?
You may recall my entries last Winter about Oracle's internal Marketing 2.0 Summit, in which a far-flung group convened to discuss the impact of transparency on Oracle's business. The germ of this idea sprouted up there, in the discussion group co-facilitated by myself and AppsLab Jake. As it turned out, Charles Phillips loved the idea, and we've been working on it ever since, with Marius Ciortea leading the project.
But Justin, isn't this just a gimmick?
Is the homepage change a transparent (pun intended) play for attention, you ask? The answer is "yes". But the underlying premise is far from one.
Oracle actually has a strong history of responding to customer feedback, whether offline via user groups relationships or online via forums.oracle.com, which contains a couple million messages at this point. The addition of blogs.oracle.com and then mix.oracle.com in the past few years has added to that record, but not in an incredibly obvious way. This program is designed to make these conversations much more transparent, as well as to broaden the process beyond the technical end-user community, where it traditionally has lived.
But this program ends on Sept. 25. Then what?
We fully intend to transform this experience into a permanent fixture of Oracle's brand-to-community-to-brand conversation. In a few months, we will report back not only on the results of this program from an input perspective, but also our plans from an output perspective. In other words, we intend to walk the talk - even if it means learning to crawl first.
I'm going to leave it at that and respond to any further questions I see in comments!
This is one of my proudest moments at Oracle. I'm confident that we are nudging the corporate aircraft carrier toward new directions that most of you, I expect, would not have anticipated.
Comments (17)
Sorry, I can't wait until tomorrow. :) I hope that some preliminary sharing of results can happen during Oracle OpenWorld.
Posted by Ontario Emperor | September 8, 2008 4:02 PM
Posted on September 8, 2008 16:02
I have to say I'm not surprised that the Justin + Jake + Marius mashup (plus others, I'm sure) resulted in such a new and somewhat unbelievable idea coming to the big screen. Congratulations on what I consider a victory for the good guys and as I've spent the last 10+ years "studying" Oracle, I feel a little bit proud (chuck on the shoulder inserted here) of the leadership for their willingness to try something completely different.
Next step: convince the world that the post-September 21st results are clean and unfiltered as much as possible. That may be harder than changing the homepage for us skeptics out here :).
Nice work--it's a great start!
Posted by Dan Norris | September 8, 2008 9:12 PM
Posted on September 8, 2008 21:12
I hope this works better than http://getsatisfaction.com/oracle
You can see the lack of activity there, and the lack of response to the one question I asked. I'll be asking my question again when the website goes live. F5....F5....F5
Posted by Paul Morriss | September 9, 2008 5:52 AM
Posted on September 9, 2008 05:52
What time does this start from today, as it's still showing the normal oracle.com page as at 15:00 BST (GMT+1)?
Posted by Boneist | September 9, 2008 5:58 AM
Posted on September 9, 2008 05:58
It's ~9am Pacific Time here; won't be long!
Posted by Justin Kestelyn | September 9, 2008 8:14 AM
Posted on September 9, 2008 08:14
Still showing the regular corporate page for me right now (at 14:39 PDT).
Posted by Brian Duff | September 9, 2008 1:39 PM
Posted on September 9, 2008 13:39
Per my update: some last-minute changes going into the build, thus a short delay (until tonight, hopefully).
Posted by Justin Kestelyn | September 9, 2008 2:32 PM
Posted on September 9, 2008 14:32
tonight Sep 10th?
Posted by Laurent Schneider | September 10, 2008 12:10 AM
Posted on September 10, 2008 00:10
Not there yet at 8am UTC on 11th. Are there last minute glitches?
Posted by Paul Morriss | September 10, 2008 11:57 PM
Posted on September 10, 2008 23:57
No glitches, it's ready to go. Just some last-minute improvements.
Posted by Justin Kestelyn | September 11, 2008 7:18 AM
Posted on September 11, 2008 07:18
Justin good luck to you and Marius with this & OOW. Big win to get afforded this prominence.
Posted by Ed Melvin | September 11, 2008 10:37 AM
Posted on September 11, 2008 10:37
on which day ends the week of Sept. 8 ?
I am to much impatient to see this :)
Posted by Laurent Schneider | September 14, 2008 12:55 PM
Posted on September 14, 2008 12:55
Any more news on why there's a delay?
Posted by Paul Morriss | September 15, 2008 6:25 AM
Posted on September 15, 2008 06:25
First of all, isn't it great to see so much interest in this!
As you can see there have been delays yes. I do expect to hear news about this in the next day or two, and of course when I know, you'll know.
Posted by Justin Kestelyn | September 15, 2008 8:00 AM
Posted on September 15, 2008 08:00
I see the page right now. Seems promising.
But, isn't it buggy ?
On the page http://mix.oracle.com/ideas I got many identical ideas "Enter your idea for Oracle here. Proposed by...".
How can I vote if I don't see the subject ?
Then, when I want to go to the second page, I come back to the first.
Posted by Nicolas Gasparotto | September 19, 2008 5:14 AM
Posted on September 19, 2008 05:14
an interesting point will be happen shortly, we can see that Oracle is transforming become more personal entity in the world..
hope the solution can become the ear for asian market that growing.
Posted by Frans Thamura | September 25, 2008 3:54 AM
Posted on September 25, 2008 03:54
Any more news on why there's a delay?
Posted by Chat | November 12, 2008 5:27 AM
Posted on November 12, 2008 05:27