E-Business
2016’s Biggest Social Media Trends for Business
This year, social media adoption hit a new high. Around the world, there are now more than 2 billion active social media users (growing at a steady pace of 25 percent a year).
This means more people now regularly use social media than the entire populations of the United States and China, combined.
The runaway expansion of social media hasn’t, of course, escaped the notice of businesses.
Social media, much more so than the web itself, has become the new ‘front door’ for business today. Nine out of 10 US companies are now active on social networks. 90 percent of businesses see increased exposure as a result and more than half report improved sales.
In 2016, the pace of social media change will accelerate even more.
The good news for businesses is that major social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are figuring out ways to make it even more simple and productive for companies to engage with customers—and employees.
Meanwhile, more and more tools are emerging that make it easier to track the impact of social media business use, whether for marketing, customer support or HR.
So what exactly is in store for 2016?
Here are 5 key social media trends for 2016 that businesses should be looking at:
Social media at work is on the rise.For years now, we’ve been promised that a new generation of internal social networks—for use inside company walls—will spell the end of email.
No more hunting through your inbox for information. No more group email threads from Hell. And yet email has lumbered on in the workplace.
Well, until now. Slack has proven a game-changer.
Its intuitive interface, built around themed chat rooms and searchable archives, has propelled it to more than a million daily active users in just two years time, from the team at NASA to the team at your local coffee shop.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s new workplace networking platform Facebook at Work is officially being used in trial mode by 300 companies (including mine).
With studies showing that using social media at work increases productivity and engagement, it’s only a matter of time before more businesses get on the bandwagon.
Companies turn to their own employees for bigger social media reach. Nearly 80 percent of businesses now have a dedicated social media team.
But many still struggle to reach an audience. 2016 will see companies turn increasingly to an underused resource in the effort to get the word out: their own employees.
Employee social advocacy programs, which encourage staff to share updates about the business on their own social media accounts, have grown by 191 percent since 2013 and are due to take off in the year ahead.
When done right, the payoff can be impressive: companies not only expand their social media reach dramatically, they also get measurably better results.
Content shared by employees, by one recent measure, gets eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels.
A new generation of tools to facilitate employee sharing (including one that Hootsuite developed) should help this approach go mainstream in 2016.
Companies start paying attention to social messaging. Here’s an eye-opener: Globally, there are nearly 4 billion active users of messaging apps, from WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to WeChat and Kik.
The top 5 apps in the world in terms of frequency of use, in fact, are all messaging apps: users are popping them open more often than even Facebook or Instagram.
What does this mean for companies? So far, not much. Messaging remains largely in the black box known as “dark social.” Right now, it’s kind of a mystery what content is being shared among users and how that affects web traffic and “conversions.”
Intrepid brands—fromHellman’s to Absolut and HBO—are testing the waters, but by and large messaging’s huge potential remains untapped.
But 2016 may well be the year that analytics and insights become more readily available, enabling companies to develop full-fledged strategies around social messaging.
All the major social platforms now have messaging components, and it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to make that data available to businesses for marketing purposes.
In the meantime, messaging is already emerging as a key channel for one-on-one social customer service.
Twitter lifted its character limits and follow requirements on direct messages earlier this year with customer support in mind, and Facebook Messenger has been busy piloting customer service features of its own.
Social media advertising (really) takes off. Haven’t noticed the exponential increase in ads on your social media feeds?
That probably means they’re working. In contrast to old-fashioned banner ads, the new generation of “native” social media ads like Facebook and Instagram sponsored posts and Twitter promoted Tweets look and act a lot like normal social media updates from friends and followers.
They’re also targeted with an uncanny degree of precision: Advertisers are able to drill down not just by age and gender but by interests, location, company affiliation, role and more. So the ads you get are probably the ones you actually want to see.
For all those reasons, companies ramped up social media advertising in 2015, withspending increasing 33.5 percent to nearly $24 billion (especially impressive because a few years ago that number was $0).
Expect to see those trends continue: By 2017, social media ads may account for a full 16 percent of all digital ad spend globally.
Fueling the growth: a host of new tools that let small businesses design and pay for social media ads in a few clicks—simplifying a process that was once the exclusive domain of high-priced media buyers.
Social video takes over. In case you missed it, social video is exploding.
Last year, Facebook more than doubled its daily video views to 8 billion, reportedly overtaking YouTube.
Twitter launched native video of its own in 2015, while Snapchat now reports 6 billion daily video views in its own right. In total, adult users now consume a total of 66 minutes of online video, each and every day.
Expect that total to climb to lofty new heights in 2016.
Facebook is readying to roll out features like Suggested Videos and maybe even a dedicated video feed, andSnapchat Stories are growing ever more popular and feature rich.
Little wonder that70 percent of companies now say video is the most effective tool in their online marketing belts and two out of three businesses expect it to dominate their strategy going forward.
Despite the stats, many companies are still reluctant to get into the social video game for one reason: the cost of professionally shot video can be prohibitively expensive. But alternatives are multiplying.
Shorter formats, from 8-second Vines to 15-second Instagram videos, not to mention streaming video like Periscope and Meerkat, offer a hassle-free entree into the arena.
Meanwhile, crowdsourcing campaigns and tools are emerging as an ever more popular way for companies to gather and share video.
The biggest trend of all for 2016, however, hardly requires a crystal ball to see.
Around the world, social media is quickly becoming business as usual for companies. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and other networks have fundamentally changed how companies reach and interact with customers, offer products and services, communicate with employees and — in a nutshell — do business. And that wave hasn’t even begun to crest.
Culled from Ryan Holmes’ blog (LinkedIn Pulse)
Pan-African digital rights organisation Paradigm Initiative (PIN) has warned that violent extremist groups are increasingly exploiting digital platforms to recruit, radicalise and manipulate young people across the Sahel region.
The organisation raised the concern in a new policy brief titled “Digital Frontlines: Countering Online Radicalisation and Violent Extremist Narratives in the Sahel.”
According to the publication, extremist groups are shifting from traditional recruitment methods to digital platforms, including social media, encrypted messaging applications, short-form video platforms and online financial incentives, to target vulnerable populations.
PIN noted that unemployed youths and people facing insecurity and limited economic opportunities are particularly susceptible to online recruitment campaigns.
The organisation said that although governments have intensified efforts to combat violent extremism, responses to the digital dimension of the threat have failed to keep pace with rapidly evolving online tactics.
It argued that addressing online radicalisation requires more than surveillance and restrictive measures, recommending investments in digital literacy, stronger community resilience, improved early-warning systems and credible counter-narratives.
PIN also urged governments to work closely with technology companies and civil society organisations to disrupt extremist recruitment while protecting citizens’ digital rights.
The report further highlighted the growing convergence between organised crime and violent extremist groups, noting that online propaganda increasingly promises financial rewards, belonging and purpose to vulnerable young people.
According to the organisation, this trend underscores the need for policymakers to prioritise prevention alongside conventional security responses.
Speaking on the findings, Moussa Waly SENE, Programmes Officer for Francophone Africa at Paradigm Initiative, described the digital space as a new frontline in the fight against violent extremism.
“As more young Africans come online, stakeholders must ensure that digital platforms remain spaces for opportunity, innovation and civic participation, not recruitment grounds for violent extremist groups. Protecting digital rights and protecting vulnerable communities should be mutually reinforcing objectives,” he said.
Among its recommendations, the policy brief called for stronger regional cooperation to tackle cross-border online extremist networks, rights-respecting content moderation and greater accountability by digital platforms.
It also advocated expanded digital literacy programmes to strengthen resilience against online manipulation and community-led initiatives that empower young people to identify and reject extremist narratives.
The organisation further urged policymakers to develop security measures that balance national security objectives with the protection of privacy, freedom of expression and access to information.
E-Business
Kaspersky Reveals a New Malicious Framework Targeting Cryptocurrency Users with the Use of OkoSpyware
At its recent annual Cyber Security Weekend for the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa (META) region, Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) shared insights about the new OkoBot campaign targeting cryptocurrency users.
The new sophisticated framework employs TookPS to exfiltrate seed phrases and uses a new OkoSpyware module to monitor Chromium-based browsers and deploy various malware strains, including the Rilide stealer.
It has already targeted hundreds of victims across over 25 countries, with the highest number of affected end users recorded in Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico and Turkiye. According to Kaspersky experts, the threat remains active and primarily poses a risk to cryptocurrency users.
In January 2026, experts from the Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) identified multiple attacks involving a previously unknown malware capable of capturing the contents of cryptocurrency wallet windows. Dubbed Okobot, the new sophisticated malware framework comprises more than 20 malicious payloads and implants designed to perform a wide range of functions, including collecting local files, executing remote commands, downloading arbitrary browser extensions, stealing cryptocurrency wallets, harvesting seed phrases and credentials, recording video and carrying out other malicious activities.
One of the new implants used in the campaign is a loader that modifies browser memory to load and hide malicious extensions. OkoBot also includes a new OkoSpyware module, which captures keystrokes and the video stream of a target application’s window.
Currently available information does not allow the campaign to be attributed to any known crimeware actor with high confidence. However, the techniques and infostealer involved are widely used by Russian-speaking threat actors, and technical analysis has also revealed code artifacts in Russian.
The initial infection typically occurs through two main vectors: ClickFix attacks, in which threat actors use social engineering to trick users into running malicious code, and malware distributed via GitHub under the guise of legitimate software. During the investigation, researchers identified one such case involving a fake installer for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), a widely used Microsoft database management tool.
The malicious framework includes SeedHunter, a malware component that monitors active system processes and injects an implant into Trezor Suite, Ledger Wallet, and Ledger Live, – official applications used to manage cryptocurrency assets. When it detects a connected Trezor or Ledger hardware wallet, it triggers the hooked functions to display a hard-coded phishing page aimed at stealing the user’s seed phrase, using a distinct layout for each wallet type.
“The OkoBot campaign has been active for more than a year and remained ongoing as of July 2026. The observed infection vectors strongly suggest that developers are among its primary targets. Of particular concern is the malware’s continued evolution, which indicates that the framework is being actively maintained. As distribution efforts persist, the campaign has the potential to reach more users and expand into additional countries in the near term,” says Dmitry Galov, Head of the Russia and CIS unit at Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team.
Afri Invoice, one of Nigeria’s leading accredited e-invoicing service providers, has announced plans to recruit more than 100 professionals nationwide to strengthen support for the Nigeria Revenue Service’s (NRS) mandatory e-invoicing compliance programme.
The recruitment campaign, is aimed at expanding the company’s workforce to meet the growing demand for digital tax infrastructure and help businesses transition smoothly to the country’s evolving e-invoicing regime.
According to the company, the new positions will be spread across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones to ensure businesses receive timely, localised support as they adapt to the new tax compliance framework.
The vacancies cut across several key departments, including Information Technology (IT), Marketing and Digital Marketing, Audit, Legal, Human Resources and multi-site office operations.
Afri Invoice said applicants are expected to possess relevant professional experience, particularly in managing operations across multiple locations and supporting organisational growth.
The company explained that the latest recruitment drive builds on a similar exercise conducted last year, which significantly expanded its operational reach and increased its capacity to onboard clients nationwide.
With the NRS intensifying the implementation of mandatory e-invoicing, Afri Invoice said it is investing in additional manpower to ensure uninterrupted service delivery, efficient client onboarding and expert technical support for businesses of all sizes.
Speaking on the expansion, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Afri Invoice, Mark Odenore, said the company remains committed to helping Nigerian businesses comply with the new tax regulations through innovative technology and professional support.
“As the national drive toward comprehensive e-invoicing gathers momentum under the Nigeria Revenue Service, our mission is to ensure that Nigerian businesses have a reliable, accredited partner to navigate this transition effortlessly,” Odenore said.
He added that recruiting more than 100 professionals across the country’s geopolitical zones would significantly strengthen the company’s ability to provide quality technology solutions and customer support nationwide.
Interested and qualified candidates have been encouraged to submit their applications through Afri Invoice’s official careers portal.
Afri Invoice is an accredited e-invoicing service provider that offers digital solutions designed to simplify financial processes, improve tax transparency and support businesses in complying with national tax regulations while enhancing supply chain and financial management.
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