A "Social" Network at Oracle

As a result of all of the press being generated at Oracle Open World this week, I just came across an August blog entry about a social network being developed within Oracle for its employees. In my posts on "knowledge networking", I have been saying that businesses don't need social networks a la Facebook; they need something different that allows employees to leverage knowledge among each other. Tim Dexter, an Oracle employee, concurs in a post he wrote about the social network at Oracle...

Paul was commenting on how the Facebooks and mySpaces of this world have no real relevance when we come to work, he hit the nail on the head for me saying' ,'behind the firewall however, photos and music don’t go very far' - yep, its interesting to see a colleague's new baby photo but beyond that the share photos, music and 'about' pages do not help you to get your work done, after all thats why we are here.

To be more productive at work I need fast access to files - help, designs, how to's, code 'cook books'. OK, maybe a little too geeky on the latter but most importantly, in my mind, I need access to people.

Knowing who people are and what they do is the toughest thing in Oracle, with circa 60,000 folks with their heads down all beavering away - who is the person that knows ADI inside out, who might be able to point me in the right direction for an Oracle Forms problem. Sure, mailing lists are a help but people are swamped with mail - they may not like to be contacted by a relative stranger but I for one would rather spend 2 minutes on the phone talking to someone rather than exchanging umpteen emails until we had finally worked out what the question really was about and given an answer.

I couldn't agree more.