February 2015 Immediate Future

Archive: Sep 2022

Yahoo first coined the phrase social commerce back in November 2005. Since then, many platforms and brands have tried to harness the concept. As happens with innovation, some early efforts were unsuccessful. Things are wholly different now. At a time when retailers are fighting tooth and nail to gain…

So Facebook has at last, after 4 years, got its patent to identify influencers and experts in a social network. And so influencer marketing comes back centre stage. I say it comes back, because when immediate future started 11 years ago, influencer marketing was a…

Moving pictures. The phrase has been around for more than one hundred years but in 2015 they really are just that. Only the buzz name for them is cinemagraphs. And they are the next big thing in social media and marketing opportunities. Based on the humble GIF file, they…

Some of the staff at Immediate Future are former journalists who have made a transition from traditional media to digital media and now to social media. Some try to forget they even used the humble manual typewriter with all that heavy industrial noise back in 1990. Seems a lifetime…

Fireworks illuminated the skies across Asia as millions celebrated the Year of the Sheep on Thursday. Wednesday night, Lunar New Year’s eve, was marked by loud booms as people set off firecrackers across china and families came together to enjoy the festivities. In China over 600 million people…

Voice is a big thing for me this week, partly because I have a cold and appear to be losing mine, but mostly because so many brands on social, need one. There is just no excuse for posts and tweets that are vanilla, samey and predictable? After all,…

Today I am going to show you how you can take your pre-made video content on your desktop computer and turn it into a Vine in 4 easy steps. Of course the real first step is producing some really top quality video content, but here’s some I…

The fact that Facebook can pinpoint your exact position, geographically targeting ads if you are within a pre-defined proximity from a location is creepy right? Creepy it may be, but very useful for advertisers when used correctly. Yet, geo-targeting isn’t the only option when it comes to ensuring…

It is very exciting to be at immediate future at the moment! Everyday we are having conversations with intelligent people at brands who are embarking on a digital transformation journey. Within the first few slides in our presentation documents we share a common immediate future belief “social is not the…

They say technology is ruining personal relationships, with a study recently published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture reporting that 70 percent of its participants, “all of whom were married or cohabiting heterosexual women, said that smartphones were interfering with their relationships” (Tech Times…

Most people, when they think of the 1960s, will probably recall the ‘swinging sixties’ or the relaxation of social taboos (clothing, music, drugs, sexuality, formalities and schooling). You may even bring to mind the conflict that raged in Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination or the Apollo 11 mission placing…

People who spread racial hatred on social media could soon be issued with ‘Internet ASBOs’ under new proposals from a group of UK MPs. The proposals seek to ban users who persistently spread racial hatred online by extending existing legislation that prevents convicted sex offenders accessing the Internet,…

A lot we think. I saw a quote last week in an article that was shared by @SaraFdezM that got me thinking – if social helped get Barack into the white house – when will it catch up in the UK elections? As…

Did you know that it was ‘National Voter Registration Day’ yesterday? In conjunction with the Electoral Commission, Facebook issued a series of little reminders to kick-start the countdown to the 2015 UK General Election. Some UK voters will have already seen the “Vote Now” or…

Convenience has been at the fore-front of user experience in computing for at least the last 30 years and for the web, this emphasis on convenience has resulted in the proliferation of easy-to-use login services. After all, who wants to fill in…

Brands are demanding results from social media. They want ROI. Quite rightly too. Social has matured and now investment is required for paid and organic (and the content to go with it all). Yet 52% of marketers say they still struggle to prove the worth of…

As announced last month the British military have launched the 77th brigade, put in place to directly combat extremist propaganda and the digital plight of Jihadist recruitment and…

Sometimes brands make mistakes. Sometimes they are huge, glaring, thousand foot high mistakes in neon pink and people usually have something to say about it on social media. In the ramp up to Super Bowl XLIX last night (the most social superbowl ever!) many brands released…