Football fever is definitely here in Europe. Strolling down the street, you see many bars, placed TVs on the sidewalk. In front of those flat screens, you see soccer fans glued to UEFA games and chucking down jugs of beers. When their teams score, you hear instantaneous celebrations. It’s simply an awesome experience.
After Germany’s 2:1 win over Denmark last night, I decided checking out football betting sites. According to users, the Spain/Germany (5 to 2) has the highest odds of facing off in the UEFA 2012 final game. (40% speculation tips that.) Followed next by Germany/Portugal (6 to 1) or !6.67% odds. In the third places, it’s Spain / France, (10 to 1).
Same thing is happening in the IT world, Salesforce has Chatter and bought Radian 6 (social intelligence tool) for $326 million and BuddyMedia (Social Marketing tool) for $689 millions. Oracle bought Virtue (~$300 millions). And, Microsoft bought Yammer for cool $1 billion. Those bets are certainly much bigger than the UEFA pools. :-p
Who shall dominate the social enterprise? This is a very interesting topic? Will it be the one with biggest wallet? Most resources? Most sales channel? The ultimate victor is still to be determined.
According to the gaming theory, the general public loves to participate. Given there are incentives, their participation will be even more active and may even attempt to sway the outcome. A group of people usually has more knowledge and resource than one individual, and hence can make better prediction and/or influence the outcome.
I am a technologist at heart and naturally interested in programming languages. Over the years, programming languages evolved from Assembly, to Cobol, to Fortran, to C, to C++, to Java, to Python, to Ruby, and now to Node.Js & Clojure. (Not in any specific order.) The process of evolution is ongoing. I have even experimented with non-english construct programming languages like Linotte (http://langagelinotte.free.fr/wordpress/). It is evident that human nature languages are richest way of communication. Programming languages are bridges between human and machines.
I ran into Mark Zuckberg in 2008 and asked him what he saw 5 years into the future. His answer was very simple, “People desire to communicate.” A few months ago, he bought Instagr.am for a cool $1 billion.
I am curious why isn’t there already a programming language that is social by nature? Until now, most software development paradigms are inward focused – Software developers write some application, testers quality check it, and the users validate or invalidate the application. BDD has started looking at the problem from the outside-in approach.
I am curious why can’t we go a step further and develop a truly social programming language. Initially, the development will broadcast expected feature specifications to the public, who can vote up and vote down on those features, and affecting the path of application development. A scenario could be described as following.
1. Specifications are drawn up and broadcasted on Chatter, Twitter, Facebook, or internal social enterprise platform.
2. Expected user population gives their feedback and vote up / down those specification.
3. Application is developed according to user’s feedbacks.
4. Certain features are released; and, receiving more user voting.
5. Modification to features are implemented.
The cycle of development progress according to users’ input. Special prize to user who gives best input or suggestion to the development. (gaming theory).
It’s clearly, this new programming language would provide richer user interaction experience from day one and present a radically different approach of constructing applications. In another word, why couldn’t one have a programming language that utilizes social networks from the onset?
UEFA 2012 is still under way. I don’t like gambling. Hence, my input is muted. But, it’s certainly fun to watch and share my opinions with other spectators.
