Hijacking #oow - the problem with hashtag success

I have talked before about the issues involved in setting up an event hashtag, most recently when I noted that the official hashtag for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is #oow rather than #oow12.

But during this morning's keynotes, @oracleopenworld issued a request that people use #oow12 instead, and apologized for "the hashtag issues."

Since I had just started to check the Twitter stream for #oow, I didn't know what @oracleopenworld was talking about, but I figured that perhaps people were latching on to the #oow stream for other purposes. And no, it wasn't Marc Benioff - at least that would be relevant.

It didn't take me long to find this interesting tweet:

Talk about hitting every popular hashtag at once! Not only did they include #oow (which frankly probably isn't a trending topic to much of the Twitterverse), but also included both #obama2012 and #tcot, throwing in #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth for good measure.

Ordinarily this would not be much of an issue - Twitter spam is all over the place - except for one little itty bitty detail.

I wasn't watching the YouTube stream from Oracle OpenWorld this morning, but I was watching it last night, and between presentations, the huge screens inside Moscone Center Hall D would occasionally display tweets with the #oow or #oracle hashtags. And because people like me were watching the proceedings online, not only were these tweets displayed to the thousands of people in Hall D, but were also displayed to the even larger numbers of people watching remotely.

The whole thing plays on ego. The organizers of an event want to immerse people in the event, so they display all the mentions of an event's hashtags. The attendees at the event want to be displayed, so they pump content on to the display. Then the spammers step in, hijack the hashtag, and sell "Obama phones," whatever they are.

Actually, it turns out that the spammer above is a Tea Party conservative. And this Tea Party conservative just got Larry Ellison mad at him. How mad? Ellison may issue his second tweet on his Twitter account. And the non-Tea Party Republicans are dreading what that tweet will be. If they're lucky, Larry will just try to upstage Benioff.

P.S. Perhaps there's another explanation. Maybe the people saw the #oow hashtag and had no idea what it was, but just realized that it was popular. This is a credible explanation:

Don’t use a hashtag that has other meanings or is likely to be used for something else – this is especially likely for acronyms.

And as has already been noted, "oow" is awfully similar to "oww." Speaking of Benioff...

Why I was wrong about Oracle and mobile #oow

I love to look at predictions that turn out to be incorrect. Not because I want to laugh at the person who made the incorrect prediction, but because I want to examine the reasons why the person made the incorrect prediction.

So that's what I will do today. And the person who made the bad prediction was - me.

Back in November 2007, when I was attending that year's Oracle OpenWorld, I wrote a post that began as follows:

This really isn't an Oracle OpenWorld 2007 post, so I won't label it as such.

Well, perhaps it's an Oracle OpenWorld 2010 post. (Might as well get started early.)

The NEXT generation of the Oracle Database product will probably be called Oracle Database 12m, where the "m" stands for "mobile."

Mobile is/will be that big. It's already big in my vertical market, it's obviously big in all this Tweeter/Flickr/etc. stuff I talked about earlier, so I suspect it may eventually affect the plumbing.

In this case, I'm not talking about my prediction that the 12th version of the Oracle Database product would have come out two years ago. Instead, I'm talking about what the version would be called.

During my time attending Oracle OpenWorld, the letters "i" (for Internet) and "g" (for grid) were appended to the Oracle releases. I figured that as people accessed the data from everywhere, the mobile element would become more and more important to Oracle's marketing.

As you will see below, I can claim that I was half right.

Before Oracle OpenWorld begins, Oracle provides a special briefing to its Oracle ACE Directors. These are people who are not employed by Oracle, but who have made significant contributions to the Oracle community. Eddie Awad is an Oracle ACE Director, and was in attendance at these meetings. Although the attendees are under non-disclosure, they do end up sharing certain obvious information publicly. Awad collected these public statements from the ACE Directors and shared them in two posts, including this one.

If you look at this collection, you will see a tweet from Dimitri Gielis that read as follows:

some nice features in Oracle DB 12c that will speed up development #orclapex

When I saw that tweet, I said to myself, "Of course!" After all of the talk that Larry has talked over the last few years, the use of the "c" designation makes sense. I claim that I am half correct because the "c" designation implies access from everywhere, including mobile devices. Of course, this designation concentrates on how the data itself is managed - and from a database perspective, that's what you really care about.

In case you don't know what "c" stands for, Computerworld UK spelled it out several months ago, when Ellison stated that version 12 was coming soon.

The next edition may be called 12c, with the c referring to "cloud." Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, which was released in October, used that naming convention.

Oracle has placed a strong emphasis on its cloud computing strategy of late.

More official news about the new Oracle Database release may be shared at Oracle OpenWorld - perhaps tomorrow (Sunday) evening.

Giving Promo Blocks credit, and preparing for #oow 2012

I had a very busy month in October 2009. While I spent time researching things in my former proposal world, I fulfilled my product management duties by attending Oracle OpenWorld 2009 and my company's User Conference, before publicly announcing that my interest in proposals was more than academic.

Although I have left the product management world behind, I have retained one item from those days - the building blocks that I acquired at Oracle OpenWorld 2009. The blocks, of course, were meant to illustrate that Oracle is able to provide all of the building blocks that you need to create a business solution. I, however, have used the blocks as toys during tense proposal periods.

I've had those blocks for nearly three years, but never took a close look at them until this week, when I noticed the following words etched into the blocks:

PROMO BLOCKS
I knew that the blocks were not Lego blocks, but I never researched to see who actually made them for Oracle. Enter Imagery Group:

Custom Full Color Building Promo Blocks

Take your ideas, concepts or program features to the next level with eye-popping Full Color Promo Blocks. Our Full Color Promo Blocks come on white blocks and include one full color digital decal on one side and are individually poly-bagged. A second digital label or screen printing is available on the second side at an additional cost.

Production time: 10 working days up to 500 sets

You'll notice that the standard product comes on white blocks. The blocks that I obtained at Oracle OpenWorld 2009 were red. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 starts next week, and if this is your first time attending Oracle OpenWorld, let me clue you in on something that you will soon discover: Oracle kinda sorta likes the color red.

I don't know if Oracle Technology Network still hands out building blocks in the post-Kestelyn era, but I'm sure that they'll have something good for you if you go by their tent.

And if you're technically inclined, see what the AppsLab has planned for the week.

P.S. Yes, the hashtag is #oow, not #oow12 or #oow2012. Perhaps this is meant to appease four digit year fans like myself, or perhaps it's an attempt to make #oow a permanent part of your existence. Get the red sunglasses.

P.P.S. "Get the red sunglasses" actually refers to something completely different, but it's not appropriate for me to share it yet. Expect me to share it later. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with another job change.