Archive: 2022

https://immediatefuture.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/TEST-IF-XMAS03.mp4   Everyone at immediate future has had a terrific year thanks to our bloomin’ amazing clients, agency friends and colleagues. We’ve learned lots along the way, won an award or four and laughed a huge amount (we know how to have fun!). We’ve tweeted, posted and insta’d our way…
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Staying on top of the latest in the fast-changing marketing industry is a challenge. There isn’t much time to stop and read or watch everything you want to. Podcasts offer a superb alternative to getting your social, digital or marketing fix whilst you carry on doing something else.
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Snapchat have now made it possible to create your own AR lens. By launching a new desktop app that can be used on both Mac and Windows, Snapchat intend to make it easy to create AR objects and experiences on top of the geo-filters we all love! Snapchat have…
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We’re all guilty of blindly interacting with engagement bait. Like! Vote! Share! React! To things that… actually aren’t that engaging, but yet we do it. Does this mean that our own content quality control filter is failing? I mean, am I realistically going to win an X Box…
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They say money never sleeps and it appears neither do Instagram’s developers. The latest update is jam-packed with holiday spirit, so if you’re not into sending actual Christmas cards (you know, the ones that come in envelopes), Insta’s new creative tools might be just for you. Like…
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  Spoiler alert: if you’re not using Facebook Live then you should be – even if you’re a B2B brand who DOESN’T believe they work for you! We use them and we’re smashing it for Fujitsu. If it’s not working for you, then you’re not using it correctly, or…
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Social platforms have become much more than a place to share words and pictures. You can stay in touch with your Aunt, play Scrabble with her and tag her in hilarious cat videos. Social has long replaced traditional forms of communication like writing, to keep in touch. In many…
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Terminator? No joke. It’s been used as a lazy, negative cypher for AI for years, but it’s now actually developing at visible speed and catching up to 80’s premonitions. However, according to an article, Google’s DeepMind ‘has simple tests that may prevent AI apocalypse’. Phew.
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It seems like Facebook wants to take over the internet, and every week there seems to be a development that brings it one step closer. This week the giant’s giving Snapchat a break and is focusing on video once again. Since the launch of its TV proposition…
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Do you remember when Facebook was still competing with other social networks like MySpace and Friendster? Back then, any cute feature that was a fun way to interact with other on the platform could give a network an edge over the competition. The ‘poke’ was a nice way…
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Facebook Messenger’s had an interesting month. It literally failed to deliver twice in the last month as it inexplicably went down. There’s been some firm conversation around the kids’ app that’s worth keeping an eye on, and intriguingly, for an avid ‘bayer…
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Christmas has come early in the world of Instagram with two new features which will change the face of Instagram as we know it! Pretty huge, right? So, what are the new features? The first of the two features is Highlights. This new feature will appear directly underneath…
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  Christmas is done. It’s over. There is no more time for planning. Execution is (well it better be) in full flow. It’s time for marketers to turn their planning heads to the New Year.  And I don’t mean the 1st January 2018. I mean 16th February. Chinese New…
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  So, a six-year-old can now be on Social Media? Yes, you read that right! Facebook have released an App that targets parents with children younger than 13. This is Facebook’s first product aimed at children and they are not the first to focus on this large, untapped…
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Facebook is the  world’s largest facial recognition database with 300 million photos uploaded every day. It is no wonder then that Facebook is looking at ways to improve customer service, measured through sentiment, by analysing the expressions on shoppers faces when they visit a brick-and-mortar…
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Snap has been under a lot of pressure since it’s Q3 Earnings report and as we have reported recently change has been on the horizon for a while. In an attempt to invigorate their stagnating user growth beyond the 3% mark and boost their low revenue…
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We welcomed a broadcasting behemoth to our office for this week’s Serious Social. Gavin Dawson, head of comms for international markets, came in from the BBC to look at what we do, and discuss the changing role of social for broadcasters. How do you create content and always-on plans…
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Snapchat is undergoing an extensive app re-design, billed its ‘biggest redesign in years’, in a bid to keep their audience engaged, attract new users & regain their position in the social platform battle. This will see a redesigned user interface, making the social platform easier to use, and…
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Facebook is an incredible platform for raising awareness of causes and being a means for people to donate to those causes. We often hear heart-warming news about stories spreading across social and raising enough money for life-saving operations, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and reuniting families. Yesterday was #GivingTuesday and Facebook upped…
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Following its shocking Q3 results (which I’m not going to talk about again, promise), Snap is still keen to prove its worth to brands with big budgets. This time, the company has commissioned app analytics tool, App Annie, to report on the amount of time Snapchat’s…
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  ‘Tis the season we all start panicking about what will land under who’s Christmas tree. Whether it’s family, actual friends (which is a much smaller list than my Facebook friends), or a random colleague (if they happen to be your Secret Santa at work), buying the RIGHT Christmas present…
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The battle of good over evil has been fought since the beginning of time. It’s a war that will continue, a never-ending arms race where one side gains dominance with a new weapon until the other side nullifies the advantage and turns the tide. While nefarious forces have been…
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Is it the marketing holy grail when your business, platform, proposition, brand…grows to such planet-swallowing size that you make it into the common lexicon? Yep. Who doesn’t know what Netflix & Chill really means, but, we haven’t heard from their brand guardians or CEO to stop using it…
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It’s that time when we start to reminisce about the year we’ve had. What went wrong? What was a success and what can we do better next year? We’ve seen updates galore from all platforms. Twitter increased their character limit, Snapchat launched a self-serve ad manager, and we’ve…
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In recent months, video content has bloomed. We’re seeing more of it than ever and it’s hugely successful as a content form across platforms. So, Facebook are rising up to the demand and success of video and taking on YouTube with their new Creator app. What…
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  One week until Black Friday, and businesses all want to run a wow factor Social campaign to entice customers. The question is: Are you equipped with your strongest Black Friday strategies yet? If you think about it, just like you, almost every other business wants to make…
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Over the last few years, video has shown its might in every way across social media platforms. No longer the preserve of costly and time-consuming production studios, the medium has been revolutionised by social media. Immediate, available and free, the reach of digitised video has meant a plethora of…
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  It’s been a week since Snap’s shocking (though somewhat expected) Q3 results, and yet we’re already hit with some exciting news! Snapchat has rolled its advertising self-service tools onto a single platform with Ad Manager 2.0. The new Ad Manager unifies several of Snapchat’s existing ad buying and…
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We ❤ Instagram, but it seems like the days when we were able to see content that we’re actually interested in on our feed, are slowly slipping away… For a while now, it seems Instagram have been prioritising and promoting posts that generate a lot of engagement, and these very…
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Following Snap’s Q3 Earnings report it’s become apparent that a big change needs to happen if Snapchat is to remain a credible player in the world of social media. According to the report Snapchat’s user growth is down to a meagre 2.9 percent. Revenue targets weren’t met to…
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It seems like new features are being added to social media platforms every day. People are spending more time on their mobile devices like phones and laptops, on social media, and less time reading the daily paper or watching the TV. Traditional news platforms are becoming less popular, and news…
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  What are you talking about? Shopping. What are you talking about? Reality show influencers who break the rules. Serious Social gets serious around the clampdown on influencers not declaring brand endorsements, while the Instagram conversation centres on social commerce, and how it’s a match made in shopping heaven.
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Now that the festive season is upon us, the sound of a call centre will never be music to an irate consumer’s ears. Whether it be a product query, a refund or to simply ask a question, watching those seconds turn into minutes, into tens of minutes on…
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At IF, it’s been slowly and now concretely drummed into us: Christmas is coming. If your clients aren’t ready yet, then you need to be. Internally, it means designing our Christmas card, sorting the festivities and most importantly, making sure we are effortlessly ready to deliver everything before…
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  Let’s face it, at some point in our lives, we’ve all said something we’ve instantly regretted. In the days before social and messaging apps, the fallout might have been painful but the worst of it was usually over pretty quickly.  In the mobile-first world we live in…
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  I’m pretty sure there’s not a person reading this that hasn’t seen, used or created a GIF. They have become the bread and butter of internet culture and we are increasingly using them to communicate with our friends and even our work colleagues, exactly how we are…
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  Last week, Marnie Simpson was rapped firmly on the knuckles by the ASA for breaking CAP code rules and promoting brands without making clear she was paid to do so. There was coverage across OK!Magazine, BBC, Sky News, Daily Mail and…
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    If you still haven’t considered including Instagram as part of your Paid Ad spend, I’m hoping by the time you’ve finished reading this, you’ll change your mind. From its launch in October 2010, Instagram has become one of the most popular Social media channels with …
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In the last few months, Facebook acknowledged that an organisation with ties to the Kremlin purchased $150,000 worth of Facebook advertising related to the election. These ads were seen by approximately 126 million people over a period of more than 2 years.  …
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Just when we thought 2017 couldn’t get any worse for Snap, turns out Spectacles are a commercial flop. Snap’s first attempt at creating a hardware product failed to excite customers past their initial purchase. Despite the initial hype, the company has sold only 150,000 pairs to date, and less than…
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Netflix has been on a bit of a tear, producing high-budget original content at a rate of knots that few production companies can keep up with. The video streaming services has become so good at it that even Disney pulling content from its platform is not enough to slow…
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Social commerce is growing and shows no signs of stopping. eCommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce enable purchases through social platforms, which drastically changes the customer experience and customer journey in a multitude of ways. It’s simpler, quicker and easier than ever for us to discover products and…
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We’ve settled in nicely to our new format, and we’ve got two new guests to impart social wisdom to the world. Our CEO, Katy Howell is talking to our MD, Colin Jacobs about tourist industry tweaks and 2018 holidays. Yes, it is only October. Catrina Burns shares her…
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For a while now Facebook have been trying to address the fact that the individual users Newsfeed has, has become the most echoey echo chamber since Echo the dolphin started that fan site. As anyone is bound to notice users are served content from sources they follow, that…
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Facebook and their updates are killing the social game at the moment; here are the details on Facebook’s latest push into the mobile commerce industry. Last year, PayPal’s initial partnership with Facebook messenger allowed customers to connect their accounts with Facebook and use PayPal to shop on messenger. This…
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With the near constant innovation we see from Facebook’s ad offering, it’s easy to forget that other social media platforms release new products from time-to-time. This week there have been two announcements that have got us excited, and they’re both about video. LinkedIn First up LinkedIn is FINALLY…
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Scrolling through our social feeds has become routine to us, but it’s also something we do to pass the time. Wake up, scroll. Boring commute, scroll. You might feel like you’ve missed out on something today if you haven’t checked the latest Tweets, scrolled through Instagram or checked your…
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  As someone who has spent the last few months frantically trying to find a job after returning from a 10-month teaching stint in China, I am always interested to discover new ways to get your CV out there in front of employers. Before landing my current job…
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Keeping in line with keeping things fresh at IF, we’re giving 60 Second Social a shake-up. It’s now called Serious Social. Sometimes, there’s just too much news to fit into sixty seconds. The second tweak to our news format is that we’re going to be interviewing members of the…
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Summer holidays are a distant dream for most of us, now that we are headed towards the end of the year. All we’re left with are the pictures and memories on social media. Whilst we look fondly back on this summer, the Travel industry can use this…
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We’ve been broadcasting a lot of great news recently from IF, which puts us in a shining spotlight as an agency: a move to a stunning new office, nominations for awards, new business, visits by inspirational guests, but there’s a date in the calendar this week that gives…
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Alas! There’s a new app in town that lets you post photos to Instagram directly from your Mac or PC desktop. Meet Windowed! Created by Felix Sun, a photographer and computer engineer student, this open-source software is basically a stripped down mobile browser that tricks Instagram into thinking you’re…
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  At IF, we’re all about creating a meaningful connection between the Ad products of Social platforms and the marketing strategies of our clients.   Ever since Snapchat went public, it’s been really interesting to see a delay in waiting for them to launch a decent, competitive Ad…
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Got a favourite emoji? Now you can listen to songs based on them, with a new music recommendation update on Facebook messenger. Sooo 2017! Facebook and Apple have joined forces to create an Apple Music bot that recommends specific songs or playlists based on one particular emoji. If…
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Last week we welcomed Paul Hewitt, playwright & creative strategist, to our office. In this week’s 60 Second Social he tells us the importance of the link between playwriting, storytelling, and social. Our greatest takeaway was, considering what celebrity or family member your brand would be, and…
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To celebrate the release of iOS 11’s all new emoji set we thought it was time for a refresher course on the use of emoji in social media, to prevent some of the more common crimes against emoji. With Apple announcing the release…
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It’s 2017 and there are many wonderful things about the way the world is today versus where it was, even as recently as a few decades ago. And if you read The Better Angels of Our Nature, you start to feel really positive about mankind’s…
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  Over the last few years I have read numerous articles and statuses from women who have been ‘flirted’ with when using LinkedIn, a website that’s sole purpose is for professional use only. So, to see that Bumble, synonymous with dating, is now launching Bumble Bizz – the…
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“Your eyes will go square!” – one of the many myths my parents preached in my youth. Eating crusts never made my hair go straight. Nor did eating carrots give me night vision (much to my disappointment!) Though they tried to talk us out of it, our eyes and…
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In May, the RSPH named Instagram the worst social network for mental health in their #StatusOfMind Report, so it’s no surprise that the social network is trying to strengthen its support for users with mental health issues. Now, during live videos, you’ll be able to…
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In the first few years of this decade, it seemed that social commerce would transform the way we shop online. Yet whereas buying via social channels may have gained traction among the popular Asian social platforms like WeChat and LINE, in the West the online shopping experience is still…
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  I mean finally! Recent announcements of Snap’s major losses have had everyone asking the same question: why can’t they lure advertisers? Well, they might have just flipped the coin. Snapchat’s Chief Strategy Officer Imran Khan took to the Advertising Week New York stage on Thursday to announce what we’ve all…
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On Tuesday Twitter joyfully announced the rollout of a shiny new 280 character limit in nearly all languages. (Sorry Japan, China & Korea). Although initially the wonders of double tweet space were only available to a select few (Sorry Ellen) the internet was quick to point out that…
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Remarkably, the desire for vanity metrics is on the return. Why? Well, I’ve not got a tangible answer for you. Lazy marketers lacking robust experience? Increasing board pressure? Perhaps. Vanity metrics are the devil of Social Media. At immediate future, we’ve worked hard (for many years) educating clients,…
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After a Google bid for Snap Inc. last year was rejected, it seems that the company has been busy creating an alternative to Snapchat Discovery. It is reported to be called Stamp. A mash up between ‘St’ and ‘AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Right now, all we have is leaked…
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Developing countries don’t have the same access to Internet facilities as we have in the West. The high cost of data on mobile plans and poor infrastructures mean that it is harder for people living in developing countries to access social media networks. To remedy this, Facebook has…
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  The majority of those reading this post will be human and as such we all know that for the most part, we don’t like change of any form, in any way, by any amount. Social media platforms know that humans are full of contradictions. We complain about…
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  If you’re an Instagram junkie you’re probably already clued up on Instagram comment pods, however, if you’re clueless, here’s everything you need to know… Although they’ve been around for a short while already, I only became aware of the ‘Instagram comment pod’ concept recently. Most likely because…
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Are you being bombarded on Facebook with jealousy-inducing updates, all posted by that one friend we all have? Of course you don’t want to unfriend or permanently unfollow them because you do care, but if you see one more photo of them posing on…
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Hi Nick. I know you’ve got more hats than Mr Benn but thanks for taking the time to answer some questions on you, social, creativity and whatever else we throw at you. For those not in the know, Nick Entwistle is a creative polymath. Still shy of…
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Twitter is testing a secret tweetstorm feature making it easier for users to publish content faster on mobile. It currently takes serious skills to chain a conversation of tweets together in a cohesive tweetstorm, ultimately exposing the flaw in Twitter’s user experience. Publishers are unable to unleash their…
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Every now and then, it feels like the world is falling apart. Terror attacks, natural disasters, etc. all too often make the headlines. Social media plays a big role in breaking the news. Twitter, of course, but not only… In 2014, Facebook launched Safety Check which lets you…
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Since its inception in August 2016, Instagram Stories has been a runaway success. It now boasts over 250 million users a day. Launching ads was always part of the road map for…
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According to eMarketers’ Time Spent with Media forecast, UK adults this year will spend 1 hour and 59 minutes a day browsing on their mobile devices. That’s one minute each day more than they spend browsing via their desktop or laptop computers. There’s a first! Emarketer expects the margin to widen,…
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On Friday, we saw yet another rolling update from Facebook, this time encouraging users to interact with old friends and to try and discover new ones. This feature is more in-depth than the basic ‘friend suggestions’, it’s based on things you have in common, such as pages liked,…
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School of life is never out for summer. No matter what job you do, there’s always room to learn more, especially if you’re a perma-switched on curiosity driven creative. Your employer could (and should) be looking to develop you in your role, either by team training or on…
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We’re hiring! Katy Howell, our CEO talks about the qualities needed to be a social media professional. It’s a combination of skills that goes way beyond your online activities. Do you ask a lot of questions? Curious by nature? Courage to grab an opportunity, fail and learn? Switched…
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Looking for the latest sports game, music show or world event? YouTube’s Live feature never looked so good with video broadcasters connecting with fans during the moments that count! With YouTube new updates, video creators now have the opportunity to select the ultra-low latency option when broadcasting. The…
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Never one to go out of focus, FrontRow is the new wearable camera from WiFi product maker, Ubiquiti Networks. The gadget is made up of not one, but two cameras; one on the front and one on the back, so its guaranteed not to miss any of the action.
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  It’s not personal, it’s just business. Actually, it’s a balance of both. The whole point of LinkedIn is to be a social network for business, yet, in the fifteen years since its inception, detractors have been chipping away at everything from its design, to UX and lack…
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When Facebook first announced Watch, there was scant enthusiasm for its offerings, and that didn’t change over the months as information about the first programmes available were released. Now the platform is being trialled to a select group of users in the US, we’ve been taking…
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Yet, Instagram has over 700m active users (that is almost 6 x that of Snapchat) and 400m daily active users (It’s reported to be the second most engaged platform after Facebook). 75% of total Instagram users are outside the US and over 80% are connected to…
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For those of us that do paid on social, this is a question that comes back very often: should we or should we not use audience network as an ad placement? In case you need a little reminder, ads you place on social media don’t only appear there-…
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When Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for £11.4bn, it understood one vital thing – we like talking to our friends. As technology has changed, so have our habits – we’re not picking up the phone to talk any more, we’re picking up the phone to text.  This makes…
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Here we go. Another ‘creepy’ app has hit the app store and this one is after your face. What if you could see if your Insta posts made people happy or sad? Polygram does exactly that. This new photo-sharing social network uses facial recognition technology,…
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Last year Facebook disabled the use of ad blocking software.  This meant that the big question was whether Facebook was still a viable social network, bringing people closer together or a multi-million-dollar advertising platform. The answer may be a muddy mixture of both.   Rather than being able to…
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One of the friendlier pieces of social news this week (that’s not Snapchat slump related) was the celebration of ten years of the hashtag. That humble little symbol that identifies messages on a specific topic blew out the virtual candles after a decade of activism (#blacklivesmatter), brand brilliance…
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We’re not decking the halls just yet, but as September looms the big focus will be on where you will spend your paid this Autumn and Winter for upcoming Christmas ad campaigns. It’s a key part of the ad mix, so, which platform will be unwrapping…
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Where do you go for your fill of breaking news? Now you can head straight to YouTube. This week the video-sharing site has launched a new feature; a horizontal scrollable carousel with the latest news stories from a variety sources including ABC & BBC news. The new feed…
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Facebook steps up its game with another feature for video marketers. Advertisers can now buy video ads that will only be served when people are viewing a video. This should increase the chances of viewers watching your content! Shortly after Facebook revealed its video service, Watch, the company…
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Facebook are testing out a number of big changes within Marketplace having recently expanded the product into 17 new countries in Europe launching in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, in the biggest expansion…
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Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram… You can’t really escape videos on social media! Up until now, LinkedIn was resisting the temptation, but not anymore. The professional network has also succumbed to the video’s charms! So, what does the platform offer in terms of video creation and how can you…
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Back in 2010 rumours began to surface that the big G was working on a new social platform. I encourage you to remember what a carefree time 2010 was. Usain Bolt was world sportsman of the year. Barack Obama still had, mostly, black hair on his head. Sophie Dahl…
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Facebook seems really keen to make its Stories feature work. So keen in fact that I think it’s seen more functionality updates than any other part of Facebook for a long time – but why? The company is already making strides into younger audiences with Instagram, and many…
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In our ‘blink-and-you’ve-missed-it’ digital world, social media is leading the way in which most of us receive information. Instagram’s influence continues to grow. The platform topped 700 million monthly active users earlier this year and Instagram Stories reached 250 million daily active users just over a month ago. As…
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A new Instagram feature lets users team up to broadcast live videos, opening up all kinds of possibilities for collaboration. The latest update is one in a string of changes to both Facebook and Instagram, intended to encourage more people to use live video on their platforms. While…
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Ever heard the saying that quality is better than quantity? It hits the nail on the head when it comes to your social media community. There’s currently over 1 billion monthly active Facebook users ready to engage, endorse and buy your product. Leveraging the social media market is…
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Forget Tinder…now you can find your perfect match on LinkedIn, in a professional sense of course! LinkedIn is currently trialling a new service that identifies potential mentors with people who are looking for mentorship or guidance in a specific area, whether it be a new career path, or…
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Since its inception in 2004, Facebook has enjoyed largely uncontested growth. User acquisition has been consistent, and subsequent monetisation has been compelling. Last month’s earnings call, revealing a $3.89bn quarterly profit, up 71% from last year, revealed success that wasn’t foreseen by City Analysts, or Facebook’s own leadership…
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