 Jim Storer
Sr. Director, Social Media Strategy
Return on Community
Jim Storer : Return on Community |
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Taking a Quick Look at Oracle Mix
I'm always excited to hear of big companies jumping into social media (even if they're not a Mzinga client). When I noticed Jeremiah Owyang mention this morning on Twitter that Oracle had launched an "ideas" site, I just had to take a look. It's great they're putting themselves out there and time will tell if they're ready for all the listening they'll be asked to do.
When I first arrived on the site, I was confused. Jeremiah suggested it's an ideas site (like Dell's Ideastorm or My Starbuck's Idea) and they're clearly asking for ideas, but there are also Groups and Q&A. I was surprised there was no intro or tour to bring new members along. No "About Us" section that describes what Oracle's trying to get out of this effort and how I can help. I can find my way around, but taking a quick look at the early ideas coming in it seems like others are confused about what's an idea and what's a question too.
I'm a Terms of Service junkie. I love to see how companies handle ToS within community and I really like what Oracle's done. They link to the overall Oracle Terms of Service (which looks like they've been updated to include the community stuff) and then they have a Supplemental ToS for this community in particular. For companies looking at how to handle ToS for multiple communities, this seems like a good model to me.
I don't like how they've locked down the content on the site with a login hurdle. IMHO, one of the reasons Dell and Starbucks have had such success with their communities is that they allow you to see what's going on without having to login. The "listen for free... login to participate" it becoming the standard for this sort of initiative and I think Oracle may want to re-think their position here... especially when you experience the login process!
The login process is old-school, too many fields and an extremely complicated opt-in/out process for all the ways they want to contact you. I applaud that they ask you to opt-in to receive this stuff, but the form is just too much. Increasingly people expect very light registration for communities, understanding they're giving you something (ideas and participation) in return. This form was design for the Oracle's sales & marketing team, not the people they hope to learn from.
If the login process weren't enough, imagine my confusion when it landed me in an iProject space, with no idea sharing and a very foreign-looking UI. I'll give them a pass here (apparently they just launched and bugs are normal), but they need to fix the routing so I'm returned to the place I came from after logging in.
Finally, I was asked to confirm my account by clicking on the email that was sent to my address. No problem... this is good practice. But after doing so, I was prompted to update my profile on Oracle Mix.. with the same stuff I'd just filled in in the long form registration process! They must have SSO, right?!? This should be fixed so that members only enter info once.
Just in case this is starting to sound like I'm railing against what Oracle's done, I want to be clear that I love what they're doing. Sure, they have some fine tuning to do, but they're on the right track. I'll support anyone that wants to begin to have an open and honest conversation with their customers.
My overriding recommendations to Oracle are:
1. Tell me what you want me to do... on the first page I see. Have a Get Started tour and/or an About Us section.
2. Lower the bar for people to get started. Let them read a little bit before jumping in and participating.
3. Simplify your registration process and fix the routing issues.
What do you think? How are they doing? How did I do?
Mon, Sep 22 2008
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 The game in the ideas world is shifting from "should we do this" to "how do we do it right"?IMO Cisco did it right...http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/hd_071408.html
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@Jim,"one of the reasons Dell and Starbucks have had such success "I'm curious as to how you define success specifically with Starbucks. They seem to be getting more than just a) free coffee b) free wireless - as they did in the early days - but what constitutes success?
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Jim - nice and thoughtful overview...but they did buy themselves an out with the "Beta" tag next to the logo (and it's not like I've never hidden behind the "beta" tag.)It looks like this is something from a group called Oracle AppsLab which is a small think tank within Oracle (http://oracleappslab.com/about/). They probably thought they needed to have something in place for their OpenWorld conference this week, and just threw something together quickly.BTW, the main URL is https://mix.oracle.com/. I had an old Oracle log-in, so I didn't have to go through any onerous registration.Personally, I don't like the interface. It doesn't look like they have a way to categorize Q&A or Artices. The font for the post titles is also way too big. And like Jim said, there is no introduction about what I'm supposed to do here -- but it's a start...Tom Humbargerhttp://tomhumbarger.wordpress.com
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