Who has ever sat back and thought what social media may offer in the near future or what other new platforms may exist in the coming future. Well I have, have you? Now consider this, dating websites are known as a totally different platform for many years now where specific websites are designed and developed just for dating purposes. Whereas the social media platform of Facebook was designed for the purpose of users connecting with one another throughout the world. However, Facebook has now announced that they are integrating a dating feature into its social media platform where users from around the world will be able to view compatible matches who are making use of the dating feature. This is a great stepping stone towards future growth of the company as it is something that is outstanding and Facebook is the first to offer this feature compared to other social media platforms, giving Facebook a competitive advantage.

You’ve found the perfect boots. The problem is they are on a photo on Instagram that isn’t shoppable nor does it have a tag or mention. So, you pull up google and start describing keywords “winter boots, no-heel, brown, tall” and hope something similar comes up. Wouldn’t it be easier to take a screenshot and be directed to the same pair of boots in the photo or a similar pair? This is exactly what visual search can do. Users can upload an image and conduct a search to get more specific results. With visual searches, the image is the query, and rather than just identifying the image, search engines understand it. According to a study done by Slyce, 74% of consumers they asked in the study replied that text-based keyword searches are inefficient in helping to find the right product online. Taking photos with our phones is so ingrained in our lives and posting photos on social media is part of our daily lives. With visual search, every image becomes an opportunity to engage and convert consumers into customers. Images and video content on social media outperform written content and so it seems natural that we would want to search by using an image.

The City of Fort St. John is located in Northeastern British Columbia in the Peace Country.  The scenery is quite picturesque here and the northern lights are stunning.  Take a look at Darcy Shawchek photos on his Facebook page. These photos will give you a glimpse of Northeastern British Columbia.  Our winters here can be extremely long and one does get cabin fever.  I have seen snow as early as September and been horrified with snow Canada Day long weekend. Mindfulness is talked about quite a bit these days and many companies are incorporating it into their wellness programs. In 2011, I was introduced to Zentangle® as a method of practicing mindfulness.  The tools I required were a tile, pencil and a fine tipped marker, most of which I picked up at the dollar store at the time.  It wasn’t until I went on the internet to search for Zentangle® patterns that I came across their website.  This is where I ordered a few more supplies which has kept me busy ever since. The thought of taking formal training in Zentangle® interested me but you know where I live. What is the possibility of that ever happening? LOL, well it did happen. Fort St. John is fortunate to have Deb Bowyer, CZT (Certified Zentangle® Teacher) of Deb’s Accidental Art or on Instagram. She took the training to become a CZT and I couldn’t be happier.

Live video is more popular than ever before. And with 47% of adults aged 22-45 not watching television, they’re getting their content elsewhere. Social media is replacing television; audiences still want to consume video. Nearly everyone has a device in their pocket allowing them to stream a live video. This is where talkshoplive™ comes in. Launched in March 2018, it’s the first live streaming, social buying and selling platform for anyone. The platform embraces the concept of live social eCommerce, allowing you to host your own streaming show, selling product and engaging with your customers at the same time.

Cédric Villani, French mathematician and politician, said in March 2018: “Artificial intelligence will be everywhere, like electricity.” (Source: Nouvel Observateur) Indeed, AI technologies are progressing rapidly, with countries like the USA and China investing massive amounts to develop the field. “Until recently, AI has proven itself by surpassing humans in terms of its analytical capacity and its ability to build relationships and bring out the “message” hiding behind a cluster of complex information. Data analysis and the determination of usage trends on social media are part of this trend […], says Alexandre Beaulieu, PhD Candidate. In the future, I believe that it’s the application of “generative” algorithms – those who, beyond analysis, specialize in creating new content – open the most possibilities. Chatbots, like those who assist the customer service, are the simplest expression. It’s not foolish to imagine a machine producing promotional material specific to each customer, who develops the argument most likely to join him, and who chose the best platform to do it. Or, I imagine that we will see more and more internal social networks of large companies to grow the knowledge accumulated by all resources over the years. So we could think of a robot that determines what problematic an employee is working, and sends solutions that exploit the work done elsewhere in the company that could have passed under the radar of this employee.” Regarding social media most specifically, the applications of AI are already multiple: choosing the right clothes, communication, data analysis, chatbot, market research, etc. Advanced Symbolics Inc. (ASI), a firm based in Ottawa, is a pioneer of market research and analysis, opinion research and real-time surveys using AI.

In today’s society everyone wants things faster, now and for less. More and more people are looking for ways to say time and money as our pace as a society is not slowing down anytime soon. The future of social media and where we are going is huge and the idea of online grocery shopping is just the beginning. Online shopping has been popular for years, being able to buy clothes, diapers, shoes, household items with the click of a button and have it show up at your door step is extremely popular because of its convenience and time saving appeal. Moving into groceries is a whole new ball game because you’re buying meat, fresh fruit and vegetables and dairy products that can’t be shipped in the mail. This is where ‘Click and Collect’ has come in. ‘Click and Collect’ is an online website that you can visit, view all the groceries in the store and add them to your cart. You then pick a time slot you would like to pick up at and arrive to the store. There are designated parking spots that you call a number when you arrive and for the small cost of $3-$5 someone will do your shopping and delivery to your vehicle. Jennifer Quesnel, Click Collect Manager commented that ‘ Convenience is that we have it all ready for you so you can spend your time doing whats important to you instead of coming in to shop”.

Facebook is a globally known and utilized social media platform. It is a platform that allows users to share their thoughts and images, and companies to offer ads, shopping, and data acquisition. It is ultimately a tool in which people can communicate with others, business and human alike, across the world.

Every day, new strategies are being developed to increase social media’s role in helping business performance levels. Whether social media is utilized to better employee engagement within a company, or as a tool to market products to consumers, its facets are continually updated to provide seamless integration in business structure to improve its functioning. However, if we look ahead to the future of social media and business performance, it appears that it may not be people at all who monitor and produce the different levels of communication across various social media platforms. Who would be responsible for these specific roles then? The answer lies in one simple acronym: AI. If you don’t already know, AI stands for artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence may be defined as a type of computer or machine that possesses the capability of mimicking intelligent human behaviour (hence the word artificial). In fact, we have already had such a glimpse into the future from various businesses who have already started to implement AI across their social media channels to better their own customer engagement/service practices. One such company includes ecommerce super giant eBay, who has developed their own “ShopBot,” which uses AI technology in combination with the Facebook messenger app to assist customers in finding the items they are searching for within their price range.

Technology and technological advancements move at a rapid pace. We now have more power in our pockets than ever before, and the possibilities seem endless. The Internet of Things, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been a fascinating concept of science fiction for decades, but now it’s a reality. As social media and technology continue to develop, other technologies will advance too, and organizations of all shapes and sizes will be affected – but how?

About Facebook: Everyone knows about Facebook and almost everyone has an account on this social media network website where they connect with their friends, family and acquaintances. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and some of his fellow Harvard College students and room mates. The website was launched in 2004 that has now grown to become a $104 billion company with 2.2 billion monthly active users as of January 2018. Rise of the Virtual Reality: In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg bought the VR company Oculus for billions and since then Facebook has been working on realizing company’s vision for virtual reality and social networking. As in Zuckerberg’s own words, “There’s always a richer, more immersive medium to experience the world. And after video, the next logical step is fully immersive virtual reality.” In 2016, Mark took the center stage at Oculus Connect summit to demonstrate what a Facebook social experience might look like in Virtual Reality along with unveiling Oculus’ work on a self-contained wireless VR headset that would create a new “standalone” product category.

The Cara Operations Limited group owns 10 restaurant brands such as Milestone’s, Harveys and Swiss Chalet. Cara recently decided to bring all their social media marketing in house after a pilot project in which they were able to test out how responsive they could be for all their brands without relying on agencies. At the end of the day it is a difficult decision for any business to decide whether to source out their marketing and social media or to bring it all in house. The Cara brand has such a broad reach of customers with different demographics, incomes, geography, etc that the information crossover would be a big loss if they gave it all away to an agency. By making the decision to bring all their marketing in house, their team can quickly react, respond and request information directly from their customers. The group’s marketing team uses different social media tools like Instagram and Twitter to seek out immediate feedback, buy-in and build momentum and excitement for upcoming changes such as menu or toppings!

Major U.S. auto insurance provider Progressive may be best known for Flo, its iconic spokesperson. Flo is the funny, friendly face of Progressive Insurance and one of the best known commercial spokespersons. Her official Facebook page has 4.5 million followers and she has appeared in Progressive ads since 2008,  https://www.facebook.com/flotheprogressivegirl/ The company wanted to take advantage of customers increasing use of mobile channels to interact with its brand. So Progressive used Microsoft Azure Bot Service and Cognitive Services to build the Flo Chatbot, currently featured on Facebook Messenger, which answers customer questions, provides quotes and even offers a bit of banter in Flo’s well-known style.

With brands increasingly disappearing from news feeds, ephemeral content such as Instagram Stories are key to staying visible and top-of-mind in 2018. By leveraging these features on an ongoing basis, users will continue to see your brand and can then search back to your profile to view more, like, comment, and tag, which will further boost your impressions by putting you back in their newsfeed and in front of the eyes of their following. In 2017, we saw Snapchat and Instagram stories begin getting access to linking. This has already caused a big splash in influencers driving sales through these mediums. “I expect marketers and influencers to find new and creative ways to leverage the creative, ephemeral, and highly engaging medium of stories to drive massive sales and traffic.” Says Sydney Liu cofounder of Commaful. Have you ever read a post by your favourite blogger, seen a product recommendation from them, and snapped it up right away? This is influencer marketing in action.By utilizing the voice of well-connected people in your niche, you can reach an audience that’s relevant and already engaged to make more sales. And, when 75% of consumers are more likely to buy something based on a reference on social media, it’s easy to see why influencer marketing is heating up.

„Beam me up, Scotty “, says Captain Kirk to his chief engineer, and the next thing we see is Kirk’s body disappearing from Planet X and reappearing on the starship. “Wow”, you think “I wish we could do that for real. The places I would travel to…..” Well, we are not there yet – but with the rapid development of electronic devices, Internet, ERP and the digital age in general, I wouldn’t be surprised if we could build a beamer that powerful within the next 10 years. A university in Germany that concentrates in IT systems engineering, already came  up with a machine that can scan an object, transmit it over the internet and rebuild it using a 3D printer in a new location. Imagine you can do that in retail: Sit on your sofa  buying a handbag with one click on your device and 20 minutes later it appears magically at your doorstep. Cool, right? But is it really that far off? No, to tell you the truth, it is not even considered to be science fiction anymore. We already buy things with one click, we just need to wait a bit longer than 20 minutes right now to receive the product. But wait – isn’t Amazon already testing delivery by drone? So who knows, the time of purchase to delivery in 20 minutes could actually happen sooner than you think. Especially when it pertains to your Amazon shopping experience.

Fashion company Tommy Hilfiger is one of the most recognizable and iconic fashion brands in the world. Founded in 1985 by the titular designer, the company has grown to encompass 1400 free-standing retail stores in 90 countries. Of course, like nearly all other consumer fashion brands in this day and age, Tommy Hilfiger relies heavily on online shopping to drive sales — and they’re on the forefront of social media technology to help them move forward.

I don’t know about you, but I do know that I can’t tell the future of anything, let alone social media. Trust me on this one, if I could, I would be super wealthy and be way more advanced. Unfortunately that isn’t the way it is, so your best chance with knowing the future of social media is to search and investigate new products on the market. After I did a lot of searching to determine what I would write about this week, I decided to go with the company that I believe has been a pioneer in e-marketing since the beginning. Constant Contact is an email-marketing program that helps small businesses succeed and excel in the online world. Back in the day when email programs were only used to view emails from friends, the people at Constant Contact knew there could be so much more to it. Constant Contact was founded as “Roving Software” in 1995 and set up shop in Brookline, Massachusetts. Randy Parker was the brains behind this very valuable marketing tool that helps small businesses succeed against the large businesses out there.

Shopping has changed a lot over the years from shopping online to wireless debit machines to credit card readers for smartphones and almost any kind of delivery that can be tracked. Did you ever wonder what would be next? Amazon designed and built a supermarket style store called Amazon Go that was created through advanced technology. The purpose of this store is to provide people a shopping experience without having to wait in check-out lines or be served by cashiers. Amazon Go was first launched for employees in December 2017 and opened up to the public in January 2018. If someone wants to shop at Amazon Go they first must have an Amazon account and the IPhone or Android app downloaded on their smartphones. This app is required to be downloaded for the customer to enter the store, as the customer enters the store they have to scan their smart phones to begin their shopping experience. Customers are provided with reusable shopping bags to use and leave with, there are no shopping carts or baskets for customers to use. The store is filled with many cameras along the ceilings that watch every move a customer makes. In addition to cameras, the shelves are equipped with weight sensors that sensor if an item has been removed from the shelf or put back. Every time a customer takes something off the shelf the item is charged to the customer’s account. The customer can always put something back on the shelf and it will be taken off their account. A customer can even return items after leaving the store. The store isn’t completely “staffless”, there are employees in the kitchen prepping fresh food, there are also employees around the store that restock and organize shelves to maintain the store. Another position that is still filled by humans in the store is checking IDs in the alcohol section. Once the customer is ready to leave all they have to do is walk out of the store. A few minutes after walking out of the store, the customer receives a digital receipt that shows the total of their bill. The Amazon Go app will also inform the customer with data on how much time they spent shopping.

You’ve likely heard the phrase “Internet of Things” — or IoT — at some point, and you might also be scratching your head figuring out what it is or what it means. IoT – the current ‘buzz’ term for connected or ‘smart’ devices, refers to rapidly growing network of connected objects that are able to collect and exchange data using embedded sensors. The IoT is connecting more devices every day, we’re headed for a world that will have 24 billion IoT devices by 2020. According to a recent report from Gartner, Inc., the number of connected IoT devices is forecast to reach 8.4 billion by the end of 2017 – up 31 percent from 2016. Here are some examples: Wearables (Fitbit) – that sends data on your daily activity to online servers, which could then be viewed on your smartphone. Smart Home (Amazon Alexa) – that learn and adapt to your lifestyle, adjusting temperatures in the home for comfort or energy efficiency. Smart TV (Samsung) – that can stream music, videos or photos from online services or other computers in the home. It can also interact with other smart devices, for example, displaying content from baby monitors and security cameras. So chances are, if your using any of these connected devices, you’re already involved with the ‘Internet of Things.’ These devices show how IoT can add convenience to our lives, and ultimately offer us more control over the things we interact with every day. How IoT devices work – Connected devices typically connect to the Internet through a home Wi-Fi network and router. These connected devices can sometimes talk to other related devices on the same home network and act on the information they get from one another. People can interact with the connected devices to set them up, give them instructions or access data, but the devices do most of the work on their own. All of this is made possible by tiny, embedded mobile components that allow almost anything to become ‘connected’. They rely on the always-online nature of our home and business networks, and often process data online via cloud-based software where huge amounts of data from many different users can be analyzed together. Internet of Things devices have an extremely broad range of applications across almost all industries, other benefits across a range of areas include: Engineering – An IoT device in an engineering plant can alert maintenance personnel to an… Read more »

Mention the brand Adidas, and people all over the world will think of those three stripes. The brand is synonymous with style and sport, and Adidas has done an incredible job of breaking into both the athletic and personal style retail categories. So how does one of the biggest brands in the world ensure that it stays on top? The answer’s easy: social media.

Data collection and artificial intelligence can be very disconcerting to social media users. Regardless of how consumers feel about the common availability of their personal information, it is often unavoidable when one chooses to participate in online activity. There are many well-know negative impacts of the publication of personal information; however, there is an almost endless list of positives available to consumers when their information is made available to technology. Google’s ability to reroute drivers proactively in the case of an upcoming incident helps drivers get from A to B as quickly as possible. how does it work? It relies on Google’s ability to monitor the location, speed, and direction of travel of almost all drivers, anywhere in North America, by tracking drivers’ cell phones in a passive, undetectable manor. This is a great example of how personal information being made public, and it’s combination with powerful artificial intelligence software networks, can provide major benefits to those who can tolerate the risk.

Food Bloggers of Canada (FBC) is a business that works to help build the food blogging community in Canada. Some of the ways they do this by sharing the content of Canadian food bloggers on their social media platforms, running a food blogging conference, and connecting food bloggers with brands to create sponsored posts.

When our daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) at the age of 17, our family was plunged into an unfamiliar and frightening world. Suddenly, we were learning about blood sugars, insulin-to-carbohydrate impact and hypoglycemia. Hardest of all was to watch her come to terms with having a life-threatening disease. To manage her diabetes, my daughter must measure her blood sugar levels throughout the day by pricking her finger and using a glucometer to test the resulting blood drop. Then she needs to calculate the amount of insulin she needs, based on her activity and carbohydrate intake, and inject herself with insulin four times a day. Sometimes, her blood sugar levels fall too low, putting her at risk of insulin shock, which can be fatal if not treated quickly. Of course, our family isn’t alone with this struggle. It’s estimated that more than 300,000 Canadians have T1D and, around the world, the number of children under 14 with T1D is growing by 3% each year. No one knows what causes T1D and, as yet, there is no cure. But thanks to a supercomputer named Watson, research into TD1 has taken a giant step towards the day when we may be able to predict and even prevent TD1.

Without doubt, the future of social media is growing, influential and ever-powerful. As the digital divide shrinks worldwide, more and more people are joining the billions of conversations taking place in the realm of social media. Social media is the place to be. Whether you’re looking to keep in touch with friends, find the latest trends, or learn about what someone thinks, social media is where this is happening! The world of social media is highly influential. People are turning to social media to learn about and get information on important topics, such as healthcare. Traditionally, healthcare was something that people relied on healthcare professionals, such as doctors, to learn about. With the advent of the Internet, and more recently social media, people are using social media to learn about healthcare. Social media has evolved beyond a platform used to share pictures and connect with friends. Social media is now a powerful influencer for healthcare and medical advice.  

Microsoft Corporation is one of the biggest technological companies in the world. So, when it comes to future development, they are always ahead of the game. Microsoft has integrated social media through the entire company and has even created social media management software systems. When it comes to their company, future development will only keep advancing because of the social media practices that have already been put in place.

The use of social media continues to grow at a rapid pace. Sometimes it feels like I just get used to a few social media tools and then all of a sudden, there are new ones to learn about and explore. Staying on top of all the possibilities can be daunting. I’m sure many of us wonder – what is the future of social media? Ash Read of Buffer, in an article “The Future of Social Media (And How to Prepare For It): The State of Social Media 2016 Report” describes three key social media takeaways to guide social media efforts for 2017 – focus on video, spend time on Facebook and use social media to pay attention to customer support. The article also focuses on objectives and challenges, insights for marketers, and social media role evolution.