Two weeks ago, Peter Shankman broke the story about a social media “expert” who twittered unflatteringly about a customer’s home city while on his way to visit them, and how the expert was slapped in the face with it by his customer. If you’re using social media such as Facebook and Twitter for business purposes, you’d better be aware of who can see your updates so as not to commit a similar faux pas.
For example, a search for “albpm” (the BEA BPM platform acquired by Oracle, and positioned as strategic in their product strategy even though it’s not clear how they intend to converge ALBPM and BPEL Process Manager into a single runtime engine without obsolescing at least one of them) shows an interesting tweet made yesterday by Paul Cross at Oracle:
It looks like he didn’t understand (prior to that point) that if he wants to use Twitter for making possibly controversial sales strategy statements like this, it’s important to protect his updates so that only the people who he follows can see them. By this morning, his updates were protected, but Twitter search keeps all unprotected tweets available for all time.
I haven’t heard much lately about the Oracle BPM product convergence; I’m sure that there are a lot of ALBPM customers out there who are hoping that this internal directive doesn’t mean the end of ALBPM.
Nice catch.
Those of us who have worked for big software companies with large and overlapping portfolios know the challenges Oracle is facing. I am glad it’s not my job to face customers and explain how it all fits together.