Black public media absorbing The BPMplus program will include two presentations of creative technological productions at “Torrents: New Links to Black Futures” on Saturday, November 16.

Headquartered in Harlem, New York, Black Public Media is a national nonprofit media arts organization supports the event and distribution of black filmtelevision and immersive projects from Black creators who use technology to create content related to the worldwide Black experience.

On Saturday at 12:00, filmmakers and artists will meet at Songbyrd Music House to speak in regards to the art of making artificial intelligence, augmented reality, projections and video projects. The 2024 event’s featured artists, moderated by BPM Emerging Media Director Lisa Osborne, will engage with attendees by sharing their workflow and creative processes, revealing the intentions behind their designs, delving into concept art, and showcasing clips of accomplished work.

Launched in 2018, the BPMplus project offers manufacturers and technologists access to grants, scholarships, workshops, demonstrations and networking opportunities as they create projects using augmented reality, motion capture, artificial intelligence and other technologies.

“As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies become more embedded in our daily lives, it is important that access to these tools is available to everyone in the liminal or pre-commercial phase,” Osbourne said in a press release.

Creators even have access to artist residency programs and the national PitchBLACK Immersive forum.

CulturalDC once more welcomed BPMplus for its annual presentation on Torrents as an interdisciplinary series celebrates the progressive way forward for visual artstechnology, music, film and performance.

“For decades, technology training, grants and other opportunities have been funneled into the hands of a few, essentially injecting biases that existed in old or traditional media into new storytelling tools long before their mass adoption,” Osbourne said. “Our BPMplus programs strive to counter this larger trend in the worlds of technology, film, art and philanthropy by giving our immersive filmmakers and artists a seat at the table to ensure a future where all communities are represented.”

“Torrents: New Links to Black Futures” will run from November 14 to 17. BPMplus Art & Tech Showcase I starts at noon on the last day; Showcase II will happen at 2:00 PM EST. There will likely be a net mixer with a money bar from 3:30-4:30 p.m

Registration is accessible we recommend collaborating free events.

as influential economy is growing, startups like PassionFroot, Agentio and One Impression, together with social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, are attempting to construct marketplaces to connect brands with creators.

A startup based in Miami Influencefocuses on two unique features of its platform: quick response from creators and financial tools ensuring timely payment.

The company is developing a set of tools for brands to higher track campaigns. Additionally, it’s considering introducing latest financial products for creators, including loans, debit cards and bank cards.

To support these efforts, Influur has raised $10 million in Series A financing from Point72 Ventures and HTwenty Capital, bringing its total funding to over $15 million. Business angels include Sofia Vergara and Thalia.

Ishan Sinha, partner at Point72, said the platform helps creators change into higher entrepreneurs.

“Creators are good at creating content. However, they may not be business-savvy entrepreneurs. So by having a place for their money to live, they can get paid quickly and their analysis is powerful,” he said.

Influur was founded in 2021 by 4 Latina founders: CEO Alessandra Angelini, who worked as a producer at CNN before founding the corporate; chief influencer Fefi Oliveira, who has worked within the entertainment industry with corporations akin to Nickelodeon and Telemundo and has over 9 million followers on her social media accounts; chief operating officer Paula Coleman, who also worked at CNN as an associate producer; and sales director Valeria Angelini, who worked as a social media analyst at FedEx.

Before founding Influur, Angelini asked Oliveira, whom she met in college, why the creators didn’t respond to CNN’s attempts to contact her. Oliveira explained that influencers receive hundreds of messages on Instagram and email, making it difficult to manage all of them.

To solve this problem, Angelini got here up with an influencer marketing tool, similar to Google AdSense, to manage a brand’s spend on this space.

Market and community

Once joined, creators can connect all their social media accounts, view marketing pricing, and consider a listing of past brand collaborations. The startup’s founders noted that there are currently over 40,000 creators on the platform with various numbers of followers.

Creators can apply for open brand campaigns that meet their criteria. They also can go for a “gated partnership” where they receive the brand’s product in exchange for content. As for brands, they also can contact chosen creators individually for collaborations.

On the platform, creators can get suggestions and suggestions from other experienced creators and learn from them. To keep interactions relevant, the platform limits posts to creators with greater than 2,000 followers.

Angelini said many platforms list influencers based on online data, which frequently leads to low response rates. She mentioned that the influencer normally responds to a brand inquiry on Influur inside 24 hours.

Influur also offers a premium subscription for creators for $30 per thirty days, which provides them access to a one-click media kit with detailed information on pricing rates, past campaigns, social media and engagement metrics. They also get access to experiences where they will create content and exclusive webinars from popular creators.

According to Oliveira – a creator for years – certainly one of the principal problems is the pursuit of brands for a payment after ending work. To solve this problem, Influur asks brands to pay upfront, holds the cash in an escrow account, after which transfers it to the creator’s wallet once they ship all campaign products.

“Influencers often wait 60 to 120 days after publishing their final product to get paid. We solve this problem with our wallet and instant payments feature,” Oliveira said.

Creators can wait 30 days for withdrawal or withdraw the cash immediately with a 15% fee to Influur. Currently, the corporate supports withdrawals in several countries, including: within the USA, Mexico and Brazil. The startup mentioned that 20% of its creators paid this fee to get a fast payout.

In the longer term, the startup plans to launch a set of monetary tools for creators, akin to virtual accounts, short-term loans, credit and debit cards. “Influencers want Influur to become their bank. We are planning to launch a new financial product so that we are not only part of how influencers make money, but also part of how they save and spend money,” Angelini said.

Point72’s Sinha said that in his careful evaluation of the fund, he discovered that the founders care about financial stability and that the startup is constructing the fitting tools to achieve this.

Insights for brands

With the Series A raise, Influur is working to add insights to influencer campaigns together with financial tools. The company can be making a prediction engine that may allow corporations to predict the effectiveness of campaigns for a particular creator.

The company is expanding its team in 4 centers: San Francisco, Miami, Mexico and Argentina.

In addition to charging creators a 15% fast withdrawal fee and premium subscription, Influur also charges a service fee of 20-25% per transaction from brands. While the corporate had several profitable months last 12 months, it’ll take a while for Influur to generate a profit because it goals to change into money flow positive by 2026.

The startup believes it has an edge over other markets thanks to its financial tools, insights engine, and popular creator as co-founder.

British consumer rights group ‘Which?’ files an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on behalf of roughly 40 million users of its iCloud cloud storage service.

The class motion lawsuitwhich is searching for £3 billion in damages (about $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), claims Apple broke competition rules by giving preferential treatment to its own cloud storage service and effectively forcing people to pay for iCloud after a “fraud ” prices.

“iOS has a monopoly and control over Apple’s operating systems, and it’s Apple’s responsibility not to make use of this dominance to realize an unfair advantage in related markets, resembling the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what happened,” the corporate wrote in a press release announcing the filing of the claim with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).

The lawsuit alleges that Apple encourages users of its devices to join iCloud for photo storage and other data storage purposes, while making it difficult for consumers to make use of alternative storage providers – including by stopping them from storing or creating all of their data. Back up your phone data to a third-party provider.

“iOS users will have to pay for the service when photos, notes, messages and other data exceed the free 5GB limit,” he noted.

The lawsuit also accuses Apple of overcharging British consumers for iCloud subscriptions as a consequence of a lack of competition. “Apple has increased the price of iCloud for UK consumers by 20% to 29% across all storage tiers in 2023.” – it said, adding that it was searching for compensation from all affected Apple customers and estimating that individual consumers could owe a mean of £70 (about $90), depending on how long they’ve been paying Apple for iCloud services.

An analogous lawsuit – arguing that Apple has unlawfully monopolized the cloud storage market – has been filed within the US in Marchand stays pending after the corporate didn’t throw it.

UK consumers agreed

A UK claim is made on an opt-out basis for UK based consumers who qualify for inclusion. Consumers who live outside the UK and consider they’re eligible must actively conform to participate.

Spokesman Tommy Handley told us that eligible Apple customers include “anyone who ‘acquired’ iCloud services, including non-paying users, within nine years of the Consumer Rights Act coming into force on October 1, 2015.”

Handley also confirmed that the £3 billion compensation figure takes under consideration potential cancellations, duplicates and mortality.

It is a not-for-profit organization, however the litigation is being funded by Litigation Capital Management (LCM), a major global litigation financier, which it says is committed to bringing the case to fruition.

At the identical time, it calls on Apple to settle the claim without having to go to court – offering refunds to consumers and making iOS available to offer users with a “real choice” of cloud services.

Commenting in a statement, Which chief executive Anabel Hoult said: “By making this claim, Which? shows large corporations like Apple that they can’t cheat British consumers without facing consequences. Taking this legal motion means we may help consumers get the redress they deserve, discourage similar behavior in the long run and create a higher, more competitive market.”

Assuming Apple doesn’t seek an out-of-court settlement, the subsequent stage of the dispute will rely on whether the CAT grants Which permission to act as a collective representative of consumers and allows the claim to be heard on a collective basis.

In recent years, there was a rise within the number of sophistication motion lawsuits against Big Tech following a wave of antitrust enforcement on either side of the Atlantic that continues to yield incomplete results and business impact.

In the UK, Apple was also the goal of a class motion lawsuit brought last 12 months on behalf of developers over App Store fees.

Also last 12 months, a separate lawsuit within the UK was filed against Apple and Amazon, accusing them of price collusion.