“Just do it.”
Yes, the slogan of the well-known athlete brand, Nike, not Shia LaBeouf’s motivational speech gone Vine famous. Nike is adhering its “Do it,” mentality to the programming world. Its next venture, the launch of multiple open-source software.
After being noticed by TechCrunch last week, Nike published three open-source projects on the version control system, GitHub – a space that companies such as Walmart, Target, Best Buy and rival Adidas have used in the past. Nike’s release consisted of a JSON parsing framework, a distributed tracing solution for Java and a logging library written in Swift.
There is a few key backstory details regarding Nike’s open-source projects. The tracing solution for Java called WingTips, will operate on Google Dapper paper, JSON parsing framework dubbed Elevate, will leverage with Swift and make parsing “simple, reliable and compressible,” and the lightweight logging library, Willow, will be written using the Swift programming language mentioned above.
For those of you who do not know what open-source projects are, here is a crash course. It is a computer software that has made its code source available using licensing which the copyright holder has the ability to alter, study and send out the software to anyone for any purpose. Nike has also opened its own code which runs its website, in hopes of attracting programmers that will, in theory, go over and (possibly) improve its coding framework.
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Pre-teen and teenage consumers are more technologically advanced than ever and expect the, “next best thing.” Improving brand image for the company is key in grabbing the attention of these iGen (those born from mid-90’s to late 2010s) customers who are irreplaceable in Nike and Adidas’ branding angles. In terms of engaging with its customer, Nike has been known as one of the more compatible brand options and will work to expand on that notion using the tech space.
Companies like Nike have been the Batman of tech companies disguised as apparel’s Bruce Wayne. Nike has quietly flown under the radar releasing 10 iPhone apps and two iPad apps available for download through the Apple Store. Along with applications, wearable tech such as Nike Fuel, has a website entirely dedicated to developer APIs.
Expanding its brand to the technology space is a road that Nike is just beginning to jog down, increasing its swift walking pace of the past. Although Nike has been technologically active in the past, the release of its open-source projects proves that it plans on pursuing the tech space aggressively in the future.