

Oracle launches their own social network - cleverjake
https://mix.oracle.com/home

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naner
This isn't unusual, a number of larger companies have created internal social
network clones. Big companies seem to have a bunch of little pet projects that
get started because somebody important is trying to look good and be noticed.
A _lot_ of projects. Large companies spend a massive amount of wasted effort
on very poor internal software projects. It is sad.

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cleverjake
any good examples?

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naner
Several, unfortunately. I'd rather not talk about my personal experiences
here, though.

Here's some social networking examples:

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/322857/The_new_employ...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/322857/The_new_employee_connection_Social_networking_behind_the_firewall)

A lot of these projects are hardly used and hated by employees. Typical
tactics involve making it mandatory for all employees to upload a picture and
start a profile so they can boast huge adoption numbers.

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c3
"Launches"? Heh. I'm actually the lead dev on this (entp). It's been around
since at least 2007, when my git history starts. Nothing new about it, but it
seems to be a good way for Oracle employees and customers to communicate about
products.

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pt
This is not new, been around for 3-4 years now, and is targeted for oracle
employees.

What Oracle launched on Wednesday is this:

<http://cloud.oracle.com//my-cloud/service_social.html>

This is a Social Network layer on top of their latest Fusion Applications. In
my opinion, this is more about enterprise collaboration and less about
"social". Oracle is just being buzzword compliant here.

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bane
Why am I secretly wishing that users have to specify their profiles using
BPEL?

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ethank
Lord.

This is classic management by objectives incentivizing with checklist
implementation. "Social is big, we'll be social!"

People say that big companies are aircraft carriers: to big to be nimble, too
big to stop. It doesn't have to be that way, but things like this do little to
assuage from the notion that it's endemic.

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namidark
Isn't this incredibly old? I swear this has been on ENTP's portfolio page for
at least 2 years now... <http://entp.com/work/>

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etherael
I was working on an australian focused social network for oracle a while back
(almost three years now) and this was an example site given for what they had
done overseas, at that point it was also a rails app, and I note in the
portfolio it's a rails app too. Higher up in the comments here I can see
someone referring to this as an overused enterprise framework, so maybe it's
been relaunched using one of oracle's tools? Couldn't be bothered to fiddle
with it and figure it out.

It looks pretty much the same to me from memory.

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prodigal_erik
This is what happens when enterprisey frameworks are overused. Every link on
the front page wants to log me in using js to submit a hidden form containing
thousands of bytes of base64 crap to express what they know about me, namely
nothing. The unenhanced <noscript> version is generic and completely useless,
of course.

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c3
That's actually the Oracle single sign-on server you're seeing there, not the
Mix app itself.

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alfiejohn_
Clicking on a couple of posts, or going to the verification link in my sign up
email, I get:

    
    
      "System error. Please re-try your action. If you continue to get this error, please contact the Administrator."
    

Edit: it looks like it doesn't like Opera.

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cleverjake
wonderfully buzzword filled description video -

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dK60hDNuTDo)

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bozho
"Oracle" and "easy to use" just don't match. Sorry, but unless Oracle acquire
such a tool (and doesn't have time to make it crappy), I don't think they can
have something user-friendly, useful and working.

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fondue
They aren't allowed to try?

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bozho
By all means, they are allowed to try. I just don't think they can do it. If
they do - good for the customers.

