Oracle Social Cloud hones in on China with Weibo, Instagram support
Reflecting yet again how much giant tech companies want to permeate the Chinese market, Oracle Social Cloud is tapping into data from two of the world's most popular social media apps.
One of them is Weibo, a social networking platform in China that some observers describe as a Twitter-meets-Facebook mashup. The micro-blogging site counts more than 175.7 million Chinese consumers and 800,000 businesses among its user base.
The second is Instagram, which since adding support of its own for 15-second videos and sponsored photo ads, has become a much more attractive marketing and advertising channel for global brands.
As of last December, the Facebook-owned photo sharing app had roughly 300 million users sharing at a rate of approximately 70 million photos and videos each day.
Based off a homegrown social relationship management (SRM) and bolstered by a number of acquisitions a few years back, the Oracle Social Cloud touts a one-stop cloud-based shop for social listening, engagement, publishing, analytics, content and apps.
Among some of its more recent additions was last August's debut of Social Station, a digital workspace designed to give users more power and control over analytics but with fewer clicks required.
Oracle Social Cloud added support for LinkedIn last summer too, displaying metrics such as the number of likes and comments on a given update posted to the professional social network.
In broadening the net to Weibo and Instagram, Oracle stressed the increased fragmentation of social media channels in general, citing a recent Pew Research study in Friday's announcement that the number of adult Internet users subscribed to two or more social media platforms jumped from 42 percent in 2013 to 52 percent in 2014.
The point is, according to Oracle, the spread of sharing content and data to different ends makes it "more difficult than ever" for businesses to understand who are their customers.
Meg Bear, group vice president for the Oracle Social Cloud, argued in prepared remarks that centralizing customer social data into a single spot "is critical to enhance the performance of social business."
"The ability to monitor more platforms in more languages with advanced listening and sentiment analysis, and engage in real-time, in-context conversation gives organizations the ability to build customer-centric social relationships on a global scale and significantly improve the customer experience," Bear continued.
Thus, Oracle Social Cloud is now equipped with engagement and analytic support for Instagram. The deck is stacked even higher for Weibo with publishing functionality as well as engagement and analytics.