OraTweet Leaves the Nest

By Jake • May 21st, 2009 • 22 Comments

Hello, my name is OraTweetFirst off, thanks for hanging in there while I caught up on my R&R.

I came back today to hear the happy news that OraTweet will soon be available to anyone who wants to give it whirl. Noel is prepping the final package for distribution, but if you’re interested now, head over to oratweet.com and sign up to be notified when it’s ready.

The distribution requires APEX and Oracle DB, natch. APEX is a very active community, and I’m sure people like Chet and Dimitri Gielis will be chomping at the bit to get their hands on it.

I’m really stoked to see OraTweet released into the world for several reasons.

First and foremost, it’s just the “side project turned mission-critical application” story I love. Yes, believe it or not some teams here other than ours use micro-blogging for daily operational work. We have lots of internal use cases that Noel plans to share on oratweet.com.

We’re not the only ones. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting covered Oracle and OraTweet, among other enterprises using micro-blogging for work, in her whitepaper “Enterprise Micro-Sharing“.

Stories like OraTweet are common, e.g. ESME, a project fostered in the SDN, was launched about the same time OraTweet went live in June of last year.

Some people are surprised that Oracle has a micro-blogging application at all.

If you read here, you know we have a soft spot for internal innovation like Connect, which is integrated with OraTweet today. We have big plans to build out a tighter integration that will link OraTweet and Connect groups, allowing people to interact with Connect directly from OraTweet and vice versa from email, SMS and IM.

Let’s not forgot Clayton’s Oracle People iPhone app, which adds another way for people to use Connect and OraTweet.

This innovation has begun to bubble up publicly, and I’m happy for Noel.

I’m also selfishly hoping that Connect will someday go the same route. Not gonna lie.

There are other reasons I’m stoked, too.

The logo Rich designed is the default avatar that Noel is using, and OraTweet’s API was built by the late, great Carl Backstrom.

You may recall Carl’s untimely departure back in October. Carl loved APEX and saw the value in Noel’s work. Being the APEX evangelist he was, he immediately signed up to help Noel build out the vision for OraTweet.

Seeing OraTweet released into the public domain makes me happy for Carl. He would be proud.

Of course, OraTweet will be provided as-is with no support, but I’m sure Noel will keep the code clean. He tells me that he might eventually release the Windows OraTweet application too.

If you want to follow Noel’s progress, you can follow him on Twitter @noelportugal and/or @oratweet.

By the way, you might already know, there’s an Ora_Tweet too, written by Lewis Cunningham. Lewis’ version is a PL/SQL package that tweets directly from the database, very useful for tweeting status updates on processes and monitoring their progress.

You can download Lewis’ code from SourceForge.

Cool stuff all around.


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  • http://oraclenerd.com/ chet

    Very cool and congrats to Noel and Carl.

    I think it speaks very well of Oracle too. Show's that they aren't scared which seems atypical (of a big company) to me (having been fired and all).

    I'm just posting to beat @jpiwowar BTW. FIRST!

  • http://theappslab.com Jake

    Thanks. I agree.

    Did you sign up for Noel's waiting list? Figured you'd want to kick the tires.

    Maybe John took some AFK time too :)

  • http://twitter.com/osteinmeier osteinmeier

    It's out now! Go grab it while it's fresh :)

  • noelportugal

    Thanks Jake for the shout out. I’m intrigued on how and where will OraTweet end up…
    I already see people from some “big” companies downloading the package. I am willing to help them as much as I can to see them succeed. As you well know being 2.0 champions takes some understanding of their community needs. User adoption can be hard when users don’t see the potential right away. Only time and content can show the real values of all these tools.

    This comment was originally posted on http://theappslab.com/)”>Oracle AppsLab

  • http://theappslab.com/ Jake

    NP, always a pleasure to report a success story. I’m also very interested to see how adoption and usage goes. OraTweet comes at an interesting time (tipping point, anyone?) for micro-blogging, and I’m sure enterprises are curious to kick the tires.

    Keep us updated with OraTweet’s progress. You should blog . . . or maybe that’s too many characters

    This comment was originally posted on http://theappslab.com/)”>Oracle AppsLab

  • http://www.matttopper.com/ topperge

    I can confirm that XE works I’ve built a couple VMs with it already. The only trick is that you need a script to load the images into the database. I just downloaded the files tonight hopefully I can swing back and write the scripts real quick.

    Congrats Noel for getting this out, looking forward to helping out with the adoption.

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  • http://theappslab.com/ Jake

    Can you share the scripts with us, specifically Noel? I’m sure he can find a home for them on OraTweet, or if not, we can find one somewhere.

    This comment was originally posted on http://theappslab.com/)”>Oracle AppsLab

  • http://www.matttopper.com/ topperge

    Nope, I’m keeping it for myself, tough crap. Give me a couple days and I’ll get it out there. Going on vacation next week just to catch up on a whole bunch of this stuff.

    This comment was originally posted on http://theappslab.com/)”>Oracle AppsLab

  • Matt Rasmussen

    Jake, I’ve got this year’s Christmas present picked out for you. You may like it so much you’ll get one for the whole AppsLab team. http://site.despair.com/socialmediatee/

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  • http://theappslab.com/ Jake

    Hahaha, excellent. Thanks.
    I’ll add it to my collection to be, including the “wearing my twitter shirt” shirt, the “that’s what she twittered” shirt and this classic from 2007
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/saar_cmd/1359590916/.

    This comment was originally posted on http://theappslab.com/)”>Oracle AppsLab

  • http://theappslab.com/ Jake

    I hope you’re not going on vacation to work on other stuff (i.e. side projects). Thanks for sharing, we could build a nice little community of awesome around OraTweet, including clients, etc.

    I should get Noel to add a space for community add-ons and such . . .

    This comment was originally posted on http://theappslab.com/)”>Oracle AppsLab

  • joel garry

    OMG Matt, you’ve made my day, don’t know how I missed that one. This is my favorite, followed closely by the internet is full and green card lawyers.

    This comment was originally posted on http://theappslab.com/)”>Oracle AppsLab

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