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Inman Connect New York is next week! Join us to learn the most current real estate trends, whats working and whats not, and whats coming around the corner. Over just a few days, you can form strategic partnerships, learn how to fit into todays changing landscape, and gain insights into how new technologies are transforming the industry.

Blockchain is set to disrupt practically every industry and has already entered the real estate arena. Decentralized blockchain technology was designed to be a more secure way to transfer assets. Real estate transactions, especially, have always been targets for theft so using blockchain to complete these transactions seems like a natural evolution in how we do business.

If youre not familiar with blockchain technology, you may be missing out on a substantial piece of business. More and more, blockchain is leveling the playing field, making it possible for more people to conduct large transactions without jumping through standard hoops. Cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens are finding their way into all aspects of the real estate space as new currencies become available to a wider range of people.

Instant transactions, conducting business at all hours, no fees, no bank account needed, equal access at all income levels these are just a handful of the pros of blockchain in real estate transactions.

Join experts at ICNY to learn more about how blockchain and cryptocurrency are breaking into real estate and creating new avenues for real estate transactions. Learn how you can use your knowledge of this new technology in your business and put yourself several steps ahead of your competition.

ICNY is next week, April 19-21 at the Hilton Midtown in NYC! Be among the early adopters of this new technology and learn from the experts who are blazing the trail in their businesses. This is your opportunity to get ahead of the curve.

Become a disrupter. Learn from some of the smartest, most successful real estate professionals in the industry today about the latest tech and how to use it. Join the thousands of agents who have already registered to attend ICNY. Check out the full agenda to see all the sessions and start planning your three-day experience.

Cant attend in person? Register to join virtually! Youll still get the benefits of impactful sessions with key players in the industry, great takeaways you can implement immediately in your business, plus virtual networking opportunities. Register for a virtual ticket.

No other event will empower you like Inman Connect New York if youre serious about scaling your real estate business. When you attend ICNY, youll gain a wealth of knowledge, some serious tech-savvy, and insider information to help you stay ahead of the competition.

The best of the best! So much relevant and useful information from the presenters. The positive energy and all the networking between the attendees was addictive. Kinga Mills, Hawaii Life

My go-to place for staying ahead of the competition. Joe Montaleone, Century 21 Showtime Realty Ltd.

I left with WOW game-changing nuggets for my sales business that I have not heard anywhere else. Shannon Buss, Randall Realtors

Over the years Ive come to depend on Inman events to make sure I keep my finger on the pulse of whats current and emerging within our industry, coupled with building relationships nationwide that allow me to provide an even more robust consumer experience as a result. Thank you, Inman! Stacey Soleil, WEST, a Williston Financial Group Company

Inman Connect helps me stay on the cutting edge of the Real Estate Industry and the changes we are experiencing presently. Laurie Dau, Realty ONE Group

Plus, its the 25th anniversary of Inman Connect. That means even more WOW, like exclusive meet and greets with top speakers, an interactive, Insta-worthy photo experience, scavenger hunt with premium prizes like an Apple Watch and Sell It Like Serhant personal brand course, puppy play zone and more surprises.

Join thousands of real estate pros who are already registered.

Want to receive breaking Inman Events news directly to your inbox? Get on the list.

The rest is here:
ICNY: Is blockchain the future of real estate? - Inman

Taki is like Twitter or Facebook, until it isnt. This new social media platform, like others, wants to empower creators, give them a platform where they can showcase their craft and (also) make money. Like others, it wants to give casual users a feed full of fun and lively content, thought-provoking posts, or just plain chit-chatter to stay engaged, entertained, or simply pass time, too. The similarities end there.

You see, even though Taki is technically social media, its unlike any other social media platform youve seen before. It seems squarely targeted at crypto enthusiasts and its SOL purpose is, rewarding them. You dont have to be a creator or a paying subscriber to get rewarded on Taki. Anybody can earn a crypto tokencalled $TAKIon the platform by simply commenting on or liking posts. The platform also supports user-generated coinscalled $UCOINthat youre free to trade with others on Taki. Going forward, the social network plans to allow users to move coins to their custodial wallet or to any exchange account.

Taki is incubated at Web3 venture studio SuperLayer and has received a USD 2.5M fund from Solana Foundations to onboard content creators (the platform is built on Solana Blockchain). Its launching first in India today, March 31, and will be invite-only initially. Public access is coming soon.

In an exclusive interview with Financial Express Onlines Saurabh Singh, Taki co-founder Sakina Arsiwala takes us through the nitty-gritties of the new social media network and how the team plans to make a dent in a market where crypto remains a polarising asset in dire need for more clarity and optimism. Excerpts.

Our vision is to onboard the next hundred million users. We want the product to be very accessible, so its really designed for someone who has never used crypto, too. You dont need a crypto wallet to sign up for this product, you just need your Gmail or phone number. Just the way you would go to any social networking site, youd basically enter your credentials, and youd sign up and start earning crypto [or not] from day one on Taki, you dont even have to bring in any money into the system.

You could be a casual user whos occasionally commenting [on posts]. Simple things like inviting a friend onto the platform will give you Taki coins that will reside in your Taki wallet. But you dont really have to go ahead and create interesting content constantly or you dont have to do anything beyond being a casual user to use the platform.

Taki wallet is simply an account. It will be your account details including daily rewards which even casual users can get (you dont have to be a mega content creator for the rewards, you can get them just by commenting on peoples posts, liking posts, giving gold Taki) which is later stored in the wallet. If you want to take the value out, which is something thats coming soon, its when you can transfer Taki to your custodial wallet or you can move to any exchange account in the future.

So, right now, you dont have to bring in any cryptocurrency at all. Taki is the base currency of the platform. We are built on Solana, and we will be supporting SOL. But I think the idea here is that you spend a lot of time on other social networks, you spend time here doing what you would normally do, and you automatically start acquiring crypto tokens.

Navigating the crypto ecosystem is tricky but with everything, whether its paradigm shifting technologies or economic models, theres generally a lot of worry and there is also a lot of good actors-bad actors initially. Theres a lot of understanding and education that needs to happen at every level. I am very hopeful of India, because if you look at the cryptocurrency market itself, the adoption is encouraging and with the recent legislation coming [taxing income from digital assets are out and things] there is some openness to explore and understand what crypto could mean to just regular users. I strongly believe that platforms like Taki which are backed by well-known investors and come with very credible teams will be able to make a mark.

We have Bollywood and cricket and all that in India, but even at a smaller level, people are creating and embracing social media and if we can provide a stage to kind of get more economic sustainability for these people, then its really a win-win across the board.

By making it super easy and safe, we want to create understanding of crypto which as you rightly pointed out, theres a lot of scepticism around. Hopefully, we can make a small dent in making people more comfortable with the idea of crypto, so that would be a great milestone for us to achieve.

Based on what weve seen so far, we dont. We dont believe we need anything as of now, but we will work with them if anything comes up in the near future.

Its a crowded market but each platform [Twitter, Koo, others] has a very specific way of engaging with their audiences and with Taki, were not competing directly with any of these social media providers because we are a token network that presents a unique feature set that has not been done before.

Its a global platform. Taki is going to be available in several markets. India is a key market because theres an appetite for crypto and social media here. I think we will get good adoption in India and so thats where were starting but were open to most of Asia, so our strategy is more pan-Asia focused. We will be onboarding users from multiple countries over the next few months.

The beauty of Taki is that we really dont need large numbers in terms of users. What we really need is engaged users who are getting a lot of value from the platform, and so, weve not set any targets. Internally, we have thought if we hit this milestone, we would think about monetisation. In this Alpha and the next Beta phase, we are just looking to learn.

The way we are defining this right now is people participating in the rewards. The second metric would be how actively they are supporting the creators that they are fans of, and they follow.

The team behind it is like the core superhero team. We have all worked in either social media or crypto space for many years. The idea was to empower users to create value and we thought can we use crypto to enable those kinds of interactions. A social media platform became an obvious thing to do since thats something everybody understands and then we set out to redesign it for the new era, making it crypto-first, token-first.

We are in this learning and discovery phase. We want to thoughtfully expand the team and make sure that we are hiring for what the product and the company needs at any given time, but we absolutely want to expand in India.

At this point we arent really focused on that. We have some great backing. Were incubated at SuperLayer and Solana has given us a grant for creators fund. Were inventing something new so we really want to learn and understand how users are using our platform and how we can better serve them first. As soon as we are in a stable state, we will start experimenting with different monetisation paradigms. We dont believe in the traditional monetisation [ways] where platforms take all the value that is created by the users and run ads and then keep hundred percent of the revenue for themselves. We dont want to go that route. We want to experiment and see what can be the new monetisation models that we can unlock based on the interactions on the platform.

The space is evolving so fast, and you know were at the cutting edge. Were very true to this vision that creators should own their own economies, and for that, we would like the user points to be portable so they can take it to any other network they choose to go to. We would love to collaborate with developers and other people who can use the creator coin in their own systems and their own platforms. Imagine a world where when a creators create Taki coins, they basically own them.

Also Read | How Chinas Xgimi plans to make a dent in Indias highly competitive smart projector market | Interview

See the article here:
This new token-powered social media network wants to end the scepticism around cryptocurrency in India | EXCLUSIVE - The Financial Express

On March 25, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted final approval to a $1.1 million class action settlement resolving claims that the operators of two video social networking apps (defendants) surreptitiously tracked, collected, and disclosed the personally identifiable information and/or viewing data of children under the age of 13, without parental consent in violation of federal and California privacy law. Specifically, plaintiffs asserted violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), the California constitutional right to privacy, the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA), and the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Businesses Practices Act. Defendants countered that plaintiffs state-law claims were preempted by the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act, and that, furthermore, the alleged conduct is not within the scope of VPPA or the cited state consumer protection laws and does not amount to a common law invasion of privacy or a violation of Plaintiffs rights under the California Constitution. Moreover, defendants argued that plaintiffs could not recover actual damages. According to plaintiffs supplemental motion for final approval, following months-long negotiations, the parties agreed to settle the action on a class-wide basis.

The settlement requires defendants to pay $1.1 million into a non-reversionary settlement fund, to be dispersed pro rata to class members (anyone in the U.S. who, prior to the settlements effective date and while under the age of 13, registered for or used the apps) who submit a valid claim after the payment of settlement administration expenses, taxes, fees, and service awards. The courts order, however, declined to award an objectors counsel any attorneys fees for his efforts to negotiate modified relief because the agreement was negotiated in a separate proceeding in related multidistrict litigation. The court also denied plaintiffs motion for sanctions against the objectors law firm.

Continue reading here:
Social networking apps settle claims related to the collection of minors' data for $1.1 million - Lexology

The startup culture at Spinny really left a mark on Neeraj Joshi when he was working there, back in 2017-18. A veteran daydreamer, as he calls himself, Neeraj was brimming with his own startup ideas and plans, but when hed try to engage his friends in a conversation around building something, he realised they didnt reciprocate his enthusiasm, and were instead more concerned about postgraduate studies.

Seeking like-minded people to bounce ideas off, the then 22-year old joined various entrepreneur-focused communities, as well as reached out to people over LinkedIn to no avail.

The communities he joined were filled with people selling their services and products, and were devoid of any meaningful connections, while the entrepreneurs on LinkedIn didnt really respond.

Entrepreneurs are an ilk unto their own, and while it may sound like puffery, people in the ecosystem often talk about having this metaphorical entrepreneurial gene that makes founders so willing and able to endure a lot more than usual. People whove made it often profess the importance of finding your own tribe of entrepreneurs whose brains are wired to troubleshoot problems creatively and Neeraj found that lacking in his initial attempts to make contact with such people.

So he decided to go out and create his own community of entrepreneurs where conversations, discussions, problem-solving and just having a tribe took precedence over sales connections and PushStart came into being in 2018.

Beyond that, it also aims to provide a networking platform for founders so they can connect for business purposes too such as finding digital marketing partners, SEO experts, public relations experts, etc.

Neeraj started the platform as a Facebook group, but Pushstart now has its own website. Its communities are accessible on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, and Facebook only the signup is done via the website, after which admins of the platform add users to various communities depending on their indicated interests.

Pushstart has 30+ communities, and a network of over 25,000 entrepreneurs across India. The startup has impacted nearly five lakh entrepreneurs, and sees 75,000+ conversations per month. The bootstrapped, profitable venture is currently doing around Rs 8 lakh in monthly recurring revenue, aims to hit Rs 20 lakh by the end of the year.

Mumbai-based Pushstart does not charge users to join its communities or enrol on the platform. Most of its revenue, instead, comes from two offerings:

"We have guided more than 2,000 startups and directly helped 500 of them. Startup such as Upgrad, Leap Finance, Fitternity, Headout, Motilal Oswal, etc., have hired verified vendors via our network in the last one and a half years of starting this offering," Neeraj tells YourStory.

The PushPartner offering has helped over 500 member customers connect with 100+ vendors. Its GMV from the business is Rs 10 crore-plus.

Pushstart has helped make over 450+ introductions via this offering and the conversion rate for startups using those services after the introduction currently stands at 25 percent.

To join the communities on Pushstart, one simply has to fill up a form that captures some details and areas of interest about people interested in signing up. After that, Pushstarts community managers add people to communities theyve indicated interest in, and reach out to new users, individually, to see if theyd be interested in joining any other communities.

Neeraj says the company has an engagement rate of 336 percent, perhaps due to being available and present on highly used and accessible platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Not creating a separate, dedicated platform and yet another web page or app for users to flock to has helped make Pushstart more active than some other online startup communities.

Founders, including Shashank Kumar of Razorpay, Naiyya Sagi of The Good Glamm group, Ajeet Khurana from Zebpay, and Sanchit Malik of Townscript, are members of the platform and have contributed by responding to queries by users, as well as connecting them with their own industry contacts, Neeraj says.

Others like Zerodhas Nithin Kamath, Zohos Sridhar Vembu, Yulus Amit Gupta, CoinDCXs Sumit Gupta, Dharmil Sheth of Pharmeasy, Vamsi Krishna from Vedantu, and Harsh Shah of Fynd, along with other hundreds of top startup founders have held AMA sessions and attended offline meetups.

Neeraj says the company is also going to launch courses to help entrepreneurs get started in their journeys.

Pushstarts competitors include Startup Grind; the Indian startup fraternity on LinkedIN; Startup Network, India, on LinkedIN; Headstart; as well as several individual startup groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp, run independently by entrepreneurs, founders, and community managers.

With India poised to continue seeing the proliferation of startups and entrepreneurs, communities like YS Club and Pushstart are helpful in not only networking, but also finding people undertaking similar journeys. The scope for growth of such communities is immense in a young startup nation like India.

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How Pushstart is helping the startup community make connections and engage in meaningful discussions - YourStory

Earlier this month, LinkedIn held its second annual Spark conference, which featured a range of speakers on key topics designed to help LinkedIn members maximize their success.

If you missed the event, you can still catch up on all the key learnings, with the full, hour-long Spark event available to stream for free here (via registration sign-up), while LinkedIn has also shared some more specific insights into key tips and notes from the event to provide more perspective on the focus elements.

First off, LinkedIn has shared this one-page overview of key takeaways, including a range of insights from Spark speakers.

Those are some handy notes for your LinkedIn marketing approach, and how to utilize the platform to maximize opportunity.

LinkedIns also gathered a collection of key quotes from speakers, including actor Ryan Reynolds, which also provides some more perspective on how to plan and achieve success via LinkedIns networking and advertising tools.

Again, these are some valuable notes, and if you have the time, there is some good insight in the full Spark video. But if you dont, the above summaries are a good recap of the key lessons and tips, which could help in your strategic thinking.

Excerpt from:
LinkedIn Shares and Overview of Key Insights and Advice Shared at its 'Spark' 2022 Conference - Social Media Today