Opower was an American company founded in 2007, that provides a software-as-a-service customer engagement platform for utilities. It existed as an independent corporation until its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in 2016. The Opower product line is under the Oracle Utilities global business unit. History Founders Opower was founded in 2007 in Arlington, Virginia by two Harvard University graduates, Dan Yates and Alex Laskey. The two partners met as first-year students at Lowell House at Harvard and later reconnected while living in San Francisco. Prior to Opower, Laskey had worked on a political campaign involving energy issues and around that time he started reading the book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1983) by Robert B. Cialdini, which outlines what influenced Southern Californians to save energy. In the book there was conclusive evidence that "social proof" (part of nudge theory) worked, a concept grounded in the principle of normative social behavior you could behaviorally influence others. Yates and Laskey realized that at the time, the energy market was focused on new technologies, and by applying information services, the market could be disrupted. The initial service they developed was the energy-efficiency campaigns, detailed home-energy reports which incorporated behavioral science techniques. The reports include targeted tips that seek to motivate customers to lower their energy consumption to the "normal" neighborhood rate. The reports also feature smiley-face emoticons for the most energy-efficient homes, a feature that Opower added after research showed that some consumers who used less energy than average started using more once they knew the norm. The reports also compare energy usage among neighbors with similarly sized houses. President Obama's visit (2010) President Barack Obama visited Opower headquarters in Arlington on March 5, 2010. He touted the company as an economic "success story" amid a troubled economy and as a "great emblem" for clean energy jobs. During the visit, Obama said the company's growth is "a model of what we want to be seeing all across the country." He made the visit two months after announcing a "$2.3 billion program" of tax credits for "green jobs." "The work you do here...is making homes more energy efficient, it's saving people money, it's generating jobs, and it's putting America on the path to a clean energy future", Obama said at Opower. The White House released a video of Obama's appearance. Later work In July 2010, Opower opened a second office in San Francisco and had