It’s the wold’s most valuable sports brand. And it all began when founder Phil Knight decided to start selling track shoes out of the trunk of his car in 1976. Today, Nike is a global athletic shoe and apparel juggernaut, with a brand value of nearly $15 billion U.S. But a string of public controversies in the 1990s and early 2000s over the working conditions at some of Nike’s factories around the world threatened to derail close to 20 years of brand building in one fell swoop. Allegations of child labour, poor wages and dangerous working conditions at various locations in its global supply chain triggered widespread protests and seriously threatened Nike’s very existence. And while the company initially denied any claims of wrongdoing, further damaging its reputation, it eventually responded with humility and transparency. Today, Nike makes its supply chain practices transparent and available online and uses social media in various forms to actively listen to and engage with its stakeholders in order to influence where and how its products are designed and manufactured – all critical elements of effective, and modern, supply chain management.

Social media is spider-webbing into so many nooks and crannies of our everyday lives, it is a challenge to truly answer the question of “where is social media going in the future?” in a simplistic form. On one hand, the easy answer is, social media is going everywhere. For example, think of a recent time when you came across a product or app that you never thought of yourself and you say “ah…yes, that is a really good idea”…how many times has that included an accompanying app or tracking application? Social media is everywhere! There is nothing truer to that just described, to the wearables sector. From keeping a light eye on wearables through personal interest, I thought where Fit Bit and similar product is going was interesting; I also found Bellabeat, a women’s focused wearable of smart jewellery. I knew there was innovation and development, and I also knew there are apps that are built around integration with these devices. I thought looking at the future of social media through wearables would be interesting, but I had no idea how huge this space was. It was predicted (in 2016) that by 2020 that the wearables market will be worth $34 billion (Lamkin, 2016). This is up from a forecast in 2015 for the wearables market to be worth $25 billion in 2019 (CCS Insight, 2015).