• As the businesses and organizations have had to shut their doors during the coronavirus pandemic, they've often had to digitize more rapidly than originally have planned. 
• That's led to increased demand for no-code and low-code tools that help people build apps while interacting with little to no code, experts say. 
• Both startups and large software companies that have made investments in no-code and low-code tools like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce will reap the benefits of this shift, experts say. 
• On smaller company, Unqork, has been able to help slow-to-modernize industries like financial services and government build apps quickly without coding. It even helped New York City officials quickly build an app to manage the city's coronavirus response. 
• While the market is still in its early stages, one VC says that these kinds of tools have the potential to be used in every industry. 
• A recent Gartner report estimated that 75% of large enterprises will be using at least four low-code development tools by 2024. As the effects of the coronavirus have played out, one analyst predicts that that level of adoption could be accelerated to 2022. 
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

Tools that let non-programmers build simple apps or automate tasks with little to no code have been growing in popularity for the last several years. But such no-code and low-code tools are now seeing an even greater surge in demand as the coronavirus pandemic has forced companies and public agencies to conduct their business and operations online, experts say. 

A Gartner report published in March estimated that 75% of large enterprises will be using at least four low-code development tools by 2024 — both within their IT departments and for projects undertaken by non-engineers within the company. As the effects of the coronavirus pandemic have played out, though, one Gartner analyst predicts that that level of adoption could even be accelerated to 2022. 

"Companies, particularly the business units, are kind of scrambling as best they can to address some of these app gaps," says Gartner analyst Jason Wong. 

The pandemic has highlighted just how behind some organizations were in digitizing, Wong said, and he predicts that no-code and low-code tools will surge even more than originally expected. 

No-code and low-code tools span a wide range of use cases 

There's a wide range of use cases that low-code and no-code tools can be applied to. 

Both use code on the back-end, with the distinction coming down to how the user interacts with a tool or platform.

No-code tools are typically used to build simple apps whereas low-code tools are for projects that are a bit more complex and may require the expertise of a developer, said Chris Howard, a venture capitalist at Fuel Capital, which is invested in no-code company Draftbit. For example, someone could use low-code tools to automate the process of a sales rep inputting data from one app to another and notifying others about it, whereas someone could use no-code tools to spin up an app that track whether field sales reps are closing deals. 

Low-code tools, generally, have templates to assist developers or the ability to automatically generate code through prompts, while no-code tools don't require a user to interact with any code at all (picture drag-and-drop user interfaces). 

The terms also cover the broad area of technology known as robotic process automation, which refers to using software to automate repetitive tasks like data entry or sending emails by connecting different apps so data can be shared among them. 

Spreadsheet app Airtable and website design company Webflow are examples of well-known no-code platforms, while Appian and Tonkean are well-known low-code platforms. 

"No-code means a higher level of abstraction on the tool," Wong said.

Remote work is spurring higher demand for low-code and no-code products

There was already a shortage of developers with the skills to build apps from scratch even before the pandemic, and the rush to digitize will make that problem worse, experts say. 

Companies that have already invested in the low-code or no-code space will reap the benefits, whether that's startups or software giants like Microsoft (which has been building out its Power Platform tool that helps users automate tasks), Google (which recently acquired no code startup AppSheet which lets users build apps on top of Google Sheets), or Salesforce.

Salesforce is already seeing significantly increased adoption of its low-code and no-code tools, as organizations try to accomplish in a few short weeks what they originally intended to do over a few years, says Salesforce VP Ryan Ellis. 

"We're seeing a lot of rapid change and you need to be able to build apps that you need fast," Ellis told Business Insider in May, adding that it's "no longer an option for you to go out, hire in an army of developers, and build something with this hard-coded experience."

On the smaller side of things, no-code software company Unqork has seen its business boom in the last few months, according to its CEO. 

Most notably, New York City officials used Unqork's platform to build an application that helps manage the coronavirus by mapping hot spots and then helping connect residents of those areas to services. Using Unqork, city officials built the app in 72 hours without having to interact with a line of code.

"We could create a digital solution in days versus years in a compliance manner that no one else ever could before," Unqork CEO Gary Hoberman told Business Insider. "This pandemic was a wake-up call to all businesses to say, 'If you're not digital, you're going to shut down your business.'" 

Unqork is mainly used by large financial institutions, like John Hancock, Goldman Sachs, and Liberty Mutual, which use it primarily for analyzing data and for processing claims. But it's also finding a customer base in industries like government and healthcare, which have had to digitize rapidly during the pandemic. 

The company also created a program for small businesses to apply to use Unqork's services for free for one year, Hoberman says, since it realized that small businesses that need to digitize may be under financial strain because of the crisis. 

How the no-code and low-code industry will evolve

Fuel Capital's Howard predicts that no-code and low-code tools will be used in every industry, especially as companies are faced with financial difficulties. 

"As you have fewer and fewer staff — people are making layoffs — they need to be more efficient, they need to be able to prototype quickly, make sense of customer data and build applications around that," he said, "You're going to see a proliferation of people wanting to access these applications."

He also notes that many tools are now blurring the lines between no-code and low-code in order to appeal to a wider audience. 

"For example, Airtable was a 'no-code' tool for a long time but they just added custom-code functionality to their rows, so, now a user can do more sophisticated functions, if they know how," Howard said. "It's important to build to the ever-increasing sophistication of the user base."

The market is likely large enough for both large software vendors and newer, smaller vendors alike, Gartner's Wong said.

Microsoft and Salesforce likely have existing contracts with large enterprise customers and can leverage those to sell their low-code and no-code tools, but, smaller vendors can have an advantage when it comes to pricing, Wong said. People often find those tools on their own and start using them for free or at a low cost, as opposed to big vendors whose software gets disseminated from the top via a company's IT organization. 

Steve Loughlin, a partner at Accel, told Business Insider earlier this year that the low-code and no-code market is just in its beginning stages. 

"Everyone's engineering constrained, but also in the cloud," he said. "And then the business necessity of having to move fast has led to this explosion of turning people into citizen developers, who normally wouldn't have the ability to build these applications."

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• Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian is an investor in Sentropy, a startup launching Thursday to address hate speech and other online content moderation issues. 
• Last week Ohanian quit the board of Reddit, a company he cofounded 15 years ago, and vowed that he'd spend any gains from his remaining stock to help "curb racial hate."
• Sentropy uses machine learning to help human moderators flag and block verbal abuse, while limiting false flags. 
• It's not just Reddit: Other social media platforms struggle with hate speech issues too. A recent NYU report recommended that Facebook double its number of human moderators. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian – who quit the board last week and urged the company to hire a Black candidate in his place— is an investor in a new startup that says it can address the link-sharing platform's longtime issue with hate speech. 

Sentropy, which launched Thursday with $13 million in funding, aims to use artificial intelligence to analyze comments on social networks, dating sites, and forums like Reddit, to automatically block abuse and free up the time of human moderators. Ohanian cited his experience at Reddit for his decision to invest in Sentropy through his firm Initialized Capital. 

"I've seen firsthand the difficulty of manually moderating online communities," he said in a statement. "The breadth and depth of this issue require serious resources and machine learning chops. Sentropy has built the tech that is much-needed across social media communities. User safety has become a competitive differentiator for those willing to take a stand against abuse."

Reddit has long struggled to quell rampant racism and hate speech on its platform, as critics — including the site's moderators— have urged it to explicitly ban violent and hateful rhetoric. When Ohanian resigned from Reddit's board he described it as a "long overdue" move to "do the right thing," and vowed to use any future gains from company stock to "serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate."

While his investment in Sentropy precedes that commitment, racism is one among many kinds of abusive content that the startup is trying to eliminate.

"The killing of George Floyd and the resulting protests and civil unrest have once again demonstrated how systemic racism and abuse are normalized in our society," Sentropy CEO John Redgrave told Business Insider. He added that it's an important time to publicly launch the company because of the "heightened impact of online interactions and how they flow into the physical world."

Sentropy says it can use the context of comments to distinguish between what is constructive dialogue versus abusive messages. 

It's impossible for volunteer human moderators to manually catch, interpret, and moderate hurtful rhetoric on vast social networks, said company cofounder and chief operating officer Taylor Rhyne, but it's not scalable to ask moderators to automate their own system, either.

Sentropy offers an enterprise product, Detect, that provides companies with access to its technology via advanced programming interfaces (APIs) that allow them to connect with its functionality. It's also releasing a new free, browser-based product, called Defend, that gives moderators data and tools needed to identify abuse.

"If you're telling volunteer moderators across a huge community like Reddit to go and write their own [computer programs] to catch the different types of abuse that they see, you're never going to be able to play catch-up," he said. "Every 6 seconds on Reddit something is getting posted that has a slur or attack in it."

A Reddit spokesperson said that they could not verify that statistic because Sentropy did not go through its commercial data-sharing agreement process, and Reddit was not a Sentropy beta-tester. However, the company said that content that "threatens, harasses, or bullies" is prohibited on its site, and and that it has dedicated teams and internal tools to remove policy-breaking content. 

Reddit is far from alone in fighting losing battles against hate speech. A new New York University research report found that Facebook removed 9.6 million hate speech posts in the first quarter of 2020 alone and that human moderators across platforms are overwhelmed. Researchers estimated that about 15,000 workers — the overwhelming majority employed by third-party vendors — moderate Facebook, a number that they advise should be doubled. 

Based in Palo Alto and founded in 2018, Sentropy has about 20 employees hailing from the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Lattice, and Palantir. It declined to name any clients, but said it has acquired "tens of customers" during its private beta stage, which began in July, including large social media platforms, and that it manages the comments of around 100 million users. 

Beyond Ohanian's Initialized Capital, it has backing from King River Capital, Horizons Ventures, and Playground Global. 

SEE ALSO: 12 hot cybersecurity startups with lots of potential, according to a new report from PitchBook

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• Airbnb is seeing a surge in bookings, the company said on Thursday.
• Both the number of nights booked and the gross dollar value of those reservations are up year-over-year in recent periods.
• Its data indicates that travel is shifting toward local and traditional leisure destinations.
• Despite the rebound, the company has a long way to go to recover from the coronavirus crisis.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Airbnb may be on the rebound.

After seeing its business fall off a cliff due to the coronavirus pandemic, the online travel site has seen a surge in new reservations in recent weeks, the company said in a press release Thursday. It's also starting to see an uptick in the amount of money people are spending through its service, it said.

"The travel industry, including Airbnb has been hit hard by COVID-19 and there will continue to be tremendous uncertainty, but our booking data shows that travel is beginning to bounce back," the company said in its press statement.

Customers booked more nights of travel in the US through Airbnb between May 17 and June 6 than they did in the same period last year, the company said.

Meanwhile, the value of bookings made worldwide through its service last weekend was up over the same period last year. That marked the first time it had recorded year-over-year growth in what it calls gross bookings value — the figure excludes cancellations and alterations — since February, it said.

The resurgence has come as states around the country and many nations around the world have lifted or modified their coronavirus-related restrictions and lockdown orders.

Airbnb still has a long road back to full recovery

Despite its rebound, Airbnb has a long way to go to recover from the coronavirus crisis. CEO Brian Chesky forecast last month that its revenue will be down by more than 50% from last year. And data from market research firm AirDNA indicates that occupancy rates on short-term rental accommodations in coming weeks are still 10 to 20 percentage points below what they were in the same period last year.

On top of that, the nature of travel appears to be changing significantly, a trend which may not benefit Airbnb as much as VRBO, its chief rival. AirDNA reported late last month that while bookings across short-term rental sites had almost doubled in mid-May from the low point they reached in early April, US consumers were largely preferring to travel to leisure spots and beaches outside of but near the large cities in which they lived.

When asked last month about the first trip they plan to make after the pandemic restrictions are lifted, almost half of US consumers said they would like to stay within a day's drive of home, according to a survey commissioned by Airbnb itself.

AirDNA had warned that VRBO would stand to gain more from that type of resurgence in travel than Airbnb. Airbnb's core listings tend to be in and near cities. By contrast, VRBO, its chief rival, tends to have its strength in more traditional vacation and leisure destinations.

An Airbnb representative disputed that notion in an email to Business Insider.

"With all due respect for VRBO, while they may be weighted towards vacation rental markets, Airbnb has more listings outside of cities than VRBO has listings total," Airbnb spokesman Christopher Nulty said. 

Airbnb is focusing on local travel

And Airbnb says it, too, is benefiting from the trend. 

More than half of the reservations made through Airbnb in May were for accommodations that were within 200 miles of the guests' residence, the company said in its statement. That was up from about one-third in February.

Just like what's happening in the industry overall, Airbnb's customers are largely traveling to traditional leisure spots and taking their families with them, the company's data indicates. The number of nights booked through Airbnb that include at least one child as a guest is up 55% over the same period last year, the company said. Among the top destinations for its US guests are California's Big Bear Lake, a recreation spot near Los Angeles; Miramar Beach and Panama City Beach in Florida; and the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee.

Airbnb hopes to continue capitalizing on the local-travel trend. The company plans tout potential local trips and getaways in its app, website, and marketing email, it said in its statement. It's also working with local tourism departments in the US and around the world to help them promote travel to their states and countries.

Got a tip about Airbnb? Contact Troy Wolverton via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about Airbnb:
• Airbnb might not get much of a bounce from the rebound in short-term rentals
• Vacation rentals around the world have jumped 127% since early April in a sign that people are slowly starting to travel again
• Airbnb just cut nearly 2,000 jobs, but the layoffs aren't even close to offsetting a $2.4 billion revenue shortfall this year
• Airbnb is cutting 25% of staff — 1,900 jobs — after its business has been slammed by the coronavirus crisis
•  

SEE ALSO: Airbnb was supposed to ignite a boom of tech startup direct listings, but then the coronavirus killed the IPO market

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NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

• This is a preview of the Telecoms and Virtual Reality research report from Business Insider Intelligence.
• Purchase this report.
• Business Insider Intelligence offers even more technology coverage with Connectivity & Tech Pro. Subscribe today to receive industry-changing connectivity news and analysis to your inbox.

While VR headset adoption has lagged behind expectations due to technical issues, the market is now on the cusp of a transformation thanks to the promise of 5G.

The new standard's technical capabilities, like low latency, lightning-fast speeds, and support for edge computing, will help VR overcome the barriers that have inhibited its adoption. As a result, explosive growth in the VR market is expected to coincide with the rollout of 5G networks. 

As the chief growth engine for the VR market, telecoms have an opportunity to monetize the immersive tech beyond simply providing the connectivity for it.

Since the VR market is still relatively nascent, early moving telecoms have an opportunity to step in and revolutionize the VR monetization paradigm before the technology is mainstream. Network operators have a particular advantage in becoming VR solution creators and enablers because they have early access to 5G networks. That gives them a head start on prototyping 5G-dependent VR hardware, content, and services. Telecoms that pursue this route have a significant opportunity: By 2026, the annual revenue for telecoms as solution creators for the immersive technology segment is expected to reach $24 billion, per Ericsson. 

In Telecoms and Virtual Reality, Business Insider Intelligence examines how telecoms can expand beyond connectivity to become solution creators in the VR ecosystem. The report explores how telecoms will play a pivotal role in advancing the VR market, identifies what's to be gained for telecoms that move up the VR value chain, and explores emerging VR monetization models. 

Here are some of the key takeaways of the report: 

• Since content will remain a chief barrier to VR uptake, telecoms should drive value beyond connectivity in the VR ecosystem by expanding to become solution creators. 
• Creating VR solutions can help operators stay ahead of the digital revolution as convergence reshapes the industry and become more attractive partners for enterprises. 
• As 5G spreads and the VR ecosystem takes off, new monetization models will become possible for telecoms as well — like the solutions enabler model.

In full, the report: 

• Examines how 5G connectivity will help VR reach its potential. 
• Explores how telecoms can move up the VR value chain. 
• Identifies consumer and enterprise VR use cases that present the largest opportunities in the near- to mid-term.

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
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• Netflix's "The Last Days of American Crime" has a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• It was still the 10th most popular overall title on Netflix in the US on Thursday and the third most popular movie. 
• As multiple outlets noted, the movie depicts graphic police brutality at a time when protests against racism and police violence have spread across the US.
• This isn't the first Netflix movie to be a hit on the service despite poor critic reviews. "Spenser Confidential" and "Coffee and Kareem" are two recent examples.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Critics have lambasted the new Netflix movie "The Last Days of American Crime," which debuted June 5, but that hasn't stopped people from tuning in.

The movie, directed by "Taken 3" director Olivier Megaton, has a disastrous 0% Rotten Tomatoes critic score (and a 27% audience score) but is still one of Netflix's most popular movies. On Thursday, it was the 10th most popular overall title in the US and the third most popular movie (Netflix counts a view if an account watches at least two minutes of a show or movie, and its lists are based on the previous 24 hours).

As Variety and Collider noted, "The Last Days of American Crime" depicts graphic police brutality at a time when protests against racism and police violence have spread across the US in recent weeks.

Here's how Netflix describes the movie: "A bank robber joins a plot to commit one final, historic heist before the government turns on a mind-altering signal that will end all criminal behavior."

"A braindead slog that shambles forward like the zombified husk of the heist movie it wants to be, 'The Last Days of American Crime' is a death march of clichés that offers nothing to look at and even less to consider," Indiewire's David Ehrlich wrote.

"Don't care about story, characters or words, but love violence? Even you will be disappointed," Johnny Oleksinski wrote for New York Post. 

This isn't the first movie to gain popularity on Netflix despite poor reviews from critics.

The Netflix originals "Coffee and Kareem" and "Spenser Confidential" were just a couple of the recent hits on the streaming service. They have 20% and 38% critic scores, respectively. 

SEE ALSO: An extensive study breaks down how police TV shows can normalize wrongful actions by their protagonists and inaccurately portray the reality of people of color

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NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

• To practice safe social distancing, my friends and I are staying far apart from each other.
• That means we won't be able to play Settlers of Catan, the popular board game, together anytime soon.
• So we, like many millennials, turned to the Internet for answers, and played an online version called Catan Universe.
• We used a Zoom chat to see each other while playing, and while our first game was a little rocky, it eventually turned into a delightful Catan game.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, options for entertainment can seem a little limited. As an extrovert who loves playing games with friends, I've been on FaceTime every night with friends, but it's not the same as the semi-regular board game cafe excursions we enjoy (we miss you Hex & Company!).

In particular, we wanted to play our beloved Settlers of Catan— a board game where you strategically build roads and settlements to acquire resources, rob other players, and acquire victory points. The first settler to reach 10 victory points wins. I am very bad at Catan, but I love my friends and being competitive, so I was excited to coordinate an online game.

Enter: Settlers of Catan-tine. I had heard about some friends getting creative and texting photos of boards back and forth, but we decided to use app/video game Catan Universe. You can play Catan Universe on your browser, download it as an app on Google or Android, or play it via Steam, an online game platform.

It's free to play, but you can buy "Catan Gold" within it to unlock features like different theme sets and expansions; 100 pieces of Catan Gold are $.99.

We started with four players: me from my childhood home in Boston; my friend Adam, who is currently quarantined after being evacuated from Spain; my roommate Rose, who remains in New York; and my friend Asya, who is also self-isolating in New York. 

All of us except for Rose played on browser; she played via Steam. One drawback of the game is that there's no video or audio option for players to communicate through (although there is a chatbox) so we set up a separate Zoom call and pinned it. Here's how it worked.

SEE ALSO: Virtual beer pong and Zoom dinner dates: 9 creative ways millennials are staying connected with their friends while self-isolating at home

First, we had to set up our accounts on Catan Universe.

I had to enter my email and create a username and password.

Next, we had to activate our accounts. This sounds simple, but it wasn't immediately clear that activation codes were sent to our emails.

Adam criticized us for not being great at creating new accounts. My counterpoint: Many platforms let you log in with accounts from social media, so I hadn't been sent an activation code in a while.

Next up was our first big challenge: creating a game. First, we had to add each other as friends. Turns out, it's actually pretty easy. First, you click on the top left diamond with your profile.

Then, click the "friends" option from the dropdown menu that appears.

Next, you'll see this screen. This is where Zoom came in handy: We told Adam all of our usernames and he added us. On each of our screens, a little pop-up window told us he had added us.

Here is Adam screensharing to try and explain to us how to add friends (it took him a little while). He was frustrated with our technological incompetence, but nevertheless we remained friends.

While Catan is generally played with four players, we quickly realized that Catan Universe was optimized for three players.

Technically, the game required us to buy an expansion for all of us to play.

We were able to use a "scroll" to unlock four player capabilities — we had all been automatically given two upon enrolling in Catan Universe — but we couldn't customize the game at all. This became a big problem later on.

To start a game, you have to click the game token — the brown one on the left — at the bottom of the screen.

We had to use "auto match" to play our game of four players. We all put in the same specifications so we would be matched with each other: We chose a custom board, all opted for four players, and indicated we only wanted to be matched with friends.

Important to note is that you all need to do this at the same time. The first time we tried, Rose was too late and we got matched with a (presumably) AI player named Melua. We had to end that game. Sorry Melua.

At long last, it was time to start the game. The board set itself and chose who went first. The rules were the same as in the board game: Every player got to put down one road and one settlement. I was selected last, so I got to place two roads and two settlements.

I could drop my roads and cities by clicking on those dots.

Finally, after everyone else went, it was my turn to roll the dice. All I had to do was click them — everyone with settlements on the corresponding pieces automatically received their cards. The dice are on the bottom right side of the screen.

Automatically receiving cards was a great feature of the game — it's definitely one of the trickier aspects of in-person game play.

To trade with another player or the bank, you have to click a little symbol on the left side of the screen. It looks like a money pouch with a recycling sign overlaid on it.

The symbol directly to the left of it — a money pouch with the recycling sign and an "x" — closes you off to trades, if you want to be unfriendly and/or mean.

If you're making a trade, you indicate what resource you have, and what you want. All other players get a pop-up with the proposed trade. Here's Adam trading with me.

To place a road or settlement, once I had the necessary materials, I could click on them during my turn. Then, I could click where I wanted to place the materials. Here's me expanding my empire.

Same deal with development cards: I could just click that black stack of them to the right.

We were finally getting the hang of it when I accidentally happened upon the reason that you want to play a custom match: There's an auto timer on each turn. If you don't press "end turn" — the black circle on the bottom right side of the screen — at the end of your turn, you get a message telling you you'll be kicked out of the game. So yes, I got kicked out ... and was replaced by an evil AI version of myself.

I accidentally timed out three times, as I was taking too long to document the game for this article, and got kicked out. But an AI version of me continued to play as the game continued — and apparently she was quite mean.

I did not want my Catan identity to be stolen further, so we decided to end the game early and regroup later. I like to think that AI Juliana, wherever she is, is crushing someone else at Catan.

We started a new game later that night, this time only with three players. This made all the difference — we could select who was in the game and turn off the auto timer.

This time it was just Rose, Adam, and me. Asya was taking a 9 p.m. nap, so she sat this one out.

From there, we jumped right in. We were pretty much pros at this point. Here I am playing the Knight, a development card that allows me to steal from the other players.

Adam was right: I did steal from him. At this point, our game was chugging along — we were executing trades, building roads, and playing much like we would have in person.

Not to fear: Adam still won. It was a little more abrupt than our usual game ending, because there's ordinarily some human error (and time) involved in calculating victory points. But Catan Universe processed his win immediately.

Overall, I had a great time. It helped us feel a little bit normal during these trying times, and I felt like I got better at Catan. I had a few major takeaways.

I felt like we lost some of the silliness for Catan — for instance, I didn't get to do my favorite bit, which is where I trade a different player for the exact same card. It was also frustrating to coordinate Zoom with the game; our free call ran out twice while playing.

That being said, the efficiency of card distribution and counting was a huge win. Those things often bog us down during in-person games.

I came away from the experience with some tips for anyone hoping to start their own virtual Catan game.

1. Sync up with Zoom. Try to have someone with a paid subscription host it; otherwise, you'll have to start multiple free 40-minute meetings.
2. Remember to end your turn properly. Don't be like me and accidentally time out.
3. Do a practice round before you start properly. Our second round was much smoother and more enjoyable.
4. Considering buying expansions if you're consistently having four players on the board. That being said, it probably can be done for free with a little practice — and it seems like we'll have plenty of time to practice.

If you're looking to capture the spirit of Catan, this is a great option. Alternatives like Colonist.io also do a good job of recreating the game — and seemed to put less strain on our computers — although Catan Universe seems to be the most similar to the actual board game.

Generally, the virtual experience of Catan is a good one; it eliminates the peskier elements of the game (keeping track of resources and victory points) but is still just as thrilling (or frustrating) as in-person game play.

Hopefully we'll be back together soon, but in the meantime, I'll be pinning some Zoom chats and trying to build virtual longest road.

• You can easily change your profile picture on Houseparty by accessing the settings menu. 
• You will have the option to choose a photo from your library or remove the original picture entirely.
• Along with selecting a recognizable username, you may wish to change your picture in order to better personalize your account.
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

Whether you've never added a picture before or are looking to update your current one, you can change your profile picture on the Houseparty app in just a few steps.

To change your picture, you'll have to open the settings menu from the app camera screen. After navigating to the "Edit Profile" page, you'll be able to tap the circular camera icon at the top to make the switch. Choose a photo from your camera library and — once you do — you'll have the option to update it or remove it entirely at any time.

You may wish to change your profile picture in order to better personalize your Houseparty account. In the same settings menu, you'll also find options to update your email address and change your display and usernames.

Here's how to change your picture.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Apple)

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How to change your profile picture on Houseparty

1. Open the Houseparty app to the camera screen on your mobile device.

2. Tap the smiley face icon.

3. Tap the settings gear icon in the pop-up.

4. Tap "Edit Profile."

5. This will bring you to your profile page. Tap the circle with your profile picture at the top of the screen. If you haven't added a picture yet, this will appear as a gray camera icon with a green plus (+) sign to add a photo.

6. A small pop-up will appear at the bottom of the screen with the option to "Choose from Library." If you've already uploaded a photo, you'll also have the option to remove the current one entirely in addition to replacing it.

7. Scroll through your camera library folders until you find the photo you're looking for. Tap to select a photo.

8. Adjust the chosen photo on the next page. Move and scale the photo so it fits in the circular frame.

9. Tap "Choose" when you're ready.

10. You should now return to your profile page, where your circular icon at the top will reflect the change.

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• How to delete your Houseparty account in 5 easy steps

• How to change your password on Houseparty by resetting it

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• A customer is attempting to sue Apple for $1 trillion over claims that the company stole his iPhone after he brought it in for a repair in 2018.
• Raevon Terrell Parker claims that Apple kept the phone because it had "new features" that were used to aid in the development of iOS 12.
• Parker's last attempt to sue Apple was dismissed.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A Missouri man is attempting to sue Apple for a whopping $1 trillion over accusations that that the tech giant stole his iPhone and used it to develop new features after he brought it in for a repair.

Raevon Terrell Parker claims that when he brought his iPhone into the Saint Louis Galleria Apple Store in Missouri for repair in 2018, the staff kept his phone and instead provided him with a replacement iPhone, according to a statement filed at the US District Court in East Missouri on June 1 first spotted by Apple Insider.

Parker claims the staff kept the phone "by deceiving the plaintiff knowing that it was the first phone to have new features."

One of the so-called "new features" Parker claims was found on his iPhone included the ability for the iPhone "bypass certain start-up load screen options," according to an earlier filing on the matter that was dismissed. Parker claimed that the feature aided Apple in the development of iOS 12, the operating system Apple launched for the iPhone in 2018.

It's unclear exactly what Parker means by claiming that his iPhone "was the first to have new features." But Macworld suggests Parker may have installed a version of iOS that was not yet intended for the public, and that the Apple Store employee had removed it upon discovering it during the repair.

Parker also claims that he was labeled as "crazy" during his interactions at the Apple Store, which is part of the reason he is seeking compensation. In the earlier complaint, he listed his mental health as "priceless."

Parker's last attempt to sue Apple was dismissed after a judge ruled that the complaint failed to set a motion, according to Apple Insider.

Meanwhile, Apple shares reached a milestone on Wednesday by crossing $1.5 trillion in value, making it the first time any company has hit such a valuation, as Barron's noted.  

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• You can add members to a Google Group for easily accessible collaboration through forums and email, the sharing of events, documents, and more.   
• You can add members at the launch of a group or anytime after a group is created. 
• Google Groups offers several privacy levels, from a public option that allows anyone to join a private and invite-only group tier with new additions controlled by the group owner.
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

Keeping up with family, your business department, former classmates, or friends around the country has never been easier than with Google Groups. The online, remote collaboration platform lets you and your fellow members share photos, work on documents, and plan get-togethers. 

Google gives users the option to make a group where people can add themselves, request to be added, or only be added through invitation. There's no limit to the number of people who can be in a group either, so you can add as many people as you want.  

If you own a Google Group or there's a Google Group you want to add someone to, here's how to do it.

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Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

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How to add members to a Google Group

1. Go to Google Groups in a web browser and, if prompted, sign in to your account.

2. Click on "My groups" at the top of the left-hand sidebar menu. 

3. Under "My groups" in the center pane, click on the group you want to add someone to.  

4. Select "Manage members." 

5. In the left-hand column, click "Invite members."

6. Type in the email addresses of those you want to invite in the "Enter email addresses of people to invite" box. 

7. Click "Send Invites."

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• You can archive emails in Microsoft Outlook to help keep your inbox well-organized by storing essential, non-urgent messages out of sight.
• An archive button in your Outlook inbox's top menu lets you move the email into a folder accessible from the client dashboard.
• You can only archive emails from your inbox and not any other folder. 
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

Many email clients can archive old emails, and Microsoft Outlook is no exception. 

Archiving an email moves it from your inbox into a designated folder created by your email client, where it's easily accessible but out of sight. The feature helps you save the messages you might need without choosing between trashing them or a clogged inbox. 

The process of archiving an email in Outlook only takes a couple of clicks. Since archiving is meant to move emails from your inbox into your archive folder, you'll need to be logged in to your Outlook account and have your inbox open. You currently can't archive emails from other folders, such as your drafts or sent folders. 

If you want to clean up your inbox, here's how to archive an email on Outlook in four easy steps.

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Apple Macbook Pro (From $1,299.00 at Apple)

Acer Chromebook 15 (From $358.99 at Staples)

How to archive emails in a Microsoft Outlook inbox

1. Select the email in your inbox that you want to archive.

2. Click the "Archive" button located along the top menu bar of your inbox. 

3. To view archived emails, click on the "Archive" folder on the left side of your inbox. 

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• How to set up an Outlook email account on your iPhone in the Mail app

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• You can automatically forward email from your Yahoo Mail account to a Gmail account or any other email service.  
• Automatic forwarding can help you consolidate email in one account or temporarily send mail to someone else, such as if you're going on vacation.
• Email forwarding is found in your Yahoo Mail account's Settings menu.
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

You can easily set up automatic email forwarding in Yahoo Mail, which lets you send a copy of incoming messages to Gmail or any other type of email service.

Automatic email forwarding can come in handy if you are trying to consolidate all your email to a single account, or if you want to delegate your messages to another person and need to automatically forward all new messages there. 

The step-by-step instructions below are for forwarding Yahoo Mail to Gmail, but is widely applicable to any email service.

How to forward Yahoo mail to Gmail

1. Open Yahoo Mail in a browser window and click the Gear icon at the top right of the page, under the Home icon. If the browser window is wide enough, the gear will be labeled "Settings."

2. Click "More Settings."

3. In the pane on the left, click "Mailboxes."

4. Under "Mailbox list," click the Yahoo email account that you want to forward.

5. In the Forwarding section, enter the email address where you'd like your Yahoo email to be sent, and then click "Verify."

6. Go to the account where you're forwarding your mail. You should see a new email from Yahoo asking you to confirm that you want to forward your email there. This prevents anyone from maliciously or accidentally forwarding email to an account that doesn't want the messages. Confirm that you want to forward the email. Your Yahoo Mail is now  automatically forwarding to Gmail.

You can cancel email forwarding by returning to this same Yahoo Mail menu and clicking "Remove."

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• How to create folders in Gmail by using labels to organize your emails

• How to mark all Gmail as read to clear up your inbox of unread emails

• I just cleared out my Gmail using a simple trick that took only a few minutes — here's how to do it

• How to schedule send an email on Gmail on desktop or mobile, if you want to compose an email but schedule it to send at a later time

• How to find archived emails in Gmail in 2 simple ways on Mac or PC

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• Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have responded to criticism over Facebook's moderation policies following a letter written by dozens of scientists who receive funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
• The scientists called out the Facebook billionaires for allowing Trump to use the platform to spread misinformation and use divisive language.
• In response, Chan and Zuckerberg said that they were "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric" but that Facebook operated independently from the philanthropic organization and followed its own policies on moderating the platform.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have responded to criticism over Facebook's moderation policies, saying they are "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric" on the platform.

Zuckerberg and Chan were responding to a letter sent out by more than 140 scientists who receive funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In the letter, the scientists argue that Facebook's policies are "directly antithetical" to the philanthropic company's mission statement and that the "spread of deliberate misinformation and divisive language" on the platform goes against what the initiative stands for.

"The spread of news that is not vetted for factual accuracy leads to confusion and a mistrust of experts," the scientists said.

"Like many, we were disconcerted to see that Facebook has not followed their own policies in regards to President Trump, who has used the Facebook platform to spread both misinformation and incendiary statements," they added.

They specifically cited President Donald Trump's May 29 Facebook post in which he said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," something the scientists said was "a clear statement of inciting violence."

In contrast, Trump posted the same statement to Twitter, which put it behind a content warning that it was glorifying violence.

Dozens of Facebook employees walked out in protest of Trump's posts and called out the social-media company for not taking action against the incendiary statements.

In the letter written by Chan and Zuckerberg, which was shared to Twitter by the Recode reporter Teddy Schleifer, the billionaires say that while Trump's comments were unsettling, Facebook operated independently from the philanthropic organization and followed its own policies on moderating the platform.

"We take your concerns seriously and to heart," the letter said.

"And personally, like you, we are deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric at a time when our nation so desperately needs unity," it continued.

"Although CZI and Facebook are entirely separate and independent organizations with different missions and teams, we do share the same co-leader. And in this moment, we understand that CZI's relationship with Facebook is not an easy tension to bridge."

The letter linked to a status update shared by Zuckerberg in which he said Trump's May 29 post was left up on the site because the president threatened deploying the National Guard and "people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force."

Still, Chan and Zuckerberg said Facebook's decisions were "not the decisions of CZI as an organization" and "nor will Facebook ever dictate how we at CZI approach our mission, work, or partnerships."

They also pledged to "redouble" efforts as a philanthropic organization to address racial injustice.

Zuckerberg last week said the company was exploring ways to address feedback they received from the community on how they could improve their policies, including reviewing Facebook's policies "allowing discussion and threats of state use of force."

Both Chan and Zuckerberg have recently spoken out in support of the protests against police brutality spurred by the May 25 death of George Floyd.

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Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.

1. Former Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox will return after a year-long absence to his previous role at the company, which includes overseeing the main Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Cox, one of Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants, left in March 2019 over "artistic differences" with the CEO over his plans to make Facebook more privacy-focused.
2. Microsoft President Brad Smith says the company does not sell facial recognition to US police departments and committed not to unless a nationwide law is passed to regulate the technology. Smith's comments follow similar announcements from IBM and Amazon.
3. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel addressed concerns of racism at the company during a company all-hands on Tuesday but said he would not release diversity numbers, sources told Business Insider. Snap's decision not to release diversity reports is a break from major tech companies, which have generally released their diversity numbers to the public.
4. Joe Biden's campaign has demanded that Facebook fact-check political ads and crack down on misinformation. Facebook is refusing, arguing that it's up to elected officials to decide the rules on political advertising and campaigning.
5. Sony will launch the PlayStation 5 during the 2020 holiday season with a standard model and a digital edition with no disc drive. Upgrades include a solid-state hard drive and a graphics card capable of ray-tracing technology.
6. The secretive data analytics firm Palantir is preparing to file an S-1 ahead of a potential September IPO, Business Insider has learned. The IPO prep, first reported by Bloomberg, has been long anticipated at the 17-year-old company whose earliest backers include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the US intelligence and defense communities. 
7. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan responded to criticism over Facebook's moderation policies following a letter written by dozens of scientists who receive funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Chan and Zuckerberg said that while they are "deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and incendiary rhetoric," Facebook operates independently from CZI and follows its own policies on moderating the platform.
8. Tim Bray, the senior Amazon engineer who resigned in protest in May over the company firing internal critics, on Thursday said the company should be broken up. Bray was speaking during a union meeting on Zoom attended by Amazon warehouse workers, engineers, and organizers.
9. Online events platform Hopin is in talks to raise around $40 million in fresh funding led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), according to two market sources with knowledge of the deal. Hopin is only a year old and has yet to publish its first financials, but appears to have attracted frenzied interest from backers as the coronavirus puts paid to conferences and live events.
10. A customer is suing Apple for $1 trillion over claims that the company stole his iPhone after he brought it in for a repair. Raevon Terrell Parker claims that Apple kept the phone because it had "new features" that were used to aid in the development of iOS 12.

Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.

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• Twitter disclosed three major state-backed networks pushing propaganda for China, Russia, and Turkey.
• The Chinese network was by far the largest, comprising some 170,000 accounts.
• Twitter found a "core" network of 23,750 accounts tweeting pro-government material, and this was in turn spread by 150,000 "amplifier" accounts.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Twitter has identified three new major state-backed disinformation networks, the social media company announced in a blog post on Thursday.

The networks, which have now been placed in Twitter's archive, appeared to be state-run operations from China, Russia, and Turkey.

All three networks were used to spread messages favorable to their respective governments, and in Russia's case to attack political dissidents.

The Chinese state-backed network was by far the largest of the three. Twitter disclosed 1,152 and 7,340 accounts for Russia and Turkey respectively, and 23,750 for China.

These 23,750 accounts only make up what Twitter calls the "core" of the state-backed operation, writing tweets to be disseminated. These were in turn picked up by some 150,000 "amplifier" accounts.

"Of the approximately 150,000 amplifier accounts, the majority had little to no follower counts either and were strategically designed to artificially inflate impression metrics and engage with the core accounts," Twitter said. Twitter did not disclose all the 150,000 amplifier accounts on the advice of researchers.

This vast network tweeted predominantly in Chinese languages and was "spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China (CCP), while continuing to push deceptive narratives about the political dynamics in Hong Kong."

Pro-democracy protests regained traction in Hong Kong in May after Beijing brought in sweeping new legislation to reduce the region's autonomy. Some saw this as a retaliation to the six months of protests which took place in the first half of 2019 in reaction to an extradition bill.

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• Zoom disclosed on Thursday that it had deactivated the accounts of several US-based human-rights activists at the request of the Chinese government.
• Zoom said it blocked the hosts' user accounts because it didn't have the functionality to block individual accounts by location.
• It said going forward it would "not allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The popular video-chat service Zoom said on Thursday that it had blocked the accounts of Chinese human-rights campaigners because China had asked it to.

Axios reported Wednesday that an account belonging to Zhou Fengsuo, a US-based human-rights campaigner who was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, had been suspended after he hosted an event commemorating the 31st anniversary of the protests.

Initially Zoom said it had suspended Zhou's account to comply with "local laws" but was not specific about which local laws were being enforced. In a blog post published on Thursday, Zoom confirmed it was the Chinese government that had forced it to shut down multiple users' accounts after they hosted meetings about Tiananmen Square.

The meetings were attended by Chinese users, which meant they fell under Chinese censorship laws forbidding the discussion of Tiananmen Square. Zoom said that it had shut down the meetings because it did not have the capability to block users individually by country.

"We could have anticipated this need. While there would have been significant repercussions, we also could have kept the meetings running," Zoom said.

It added that it had since reinstated the users' accounts and said it was working on functionality to block users based on their geographical location. "Going forward Zoom will not allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China," it said.

News of Zoom blocking the accounts prompted Republican Sen. Josh Hawley to write a letter to company CEO Eric Yuan, asking whether Zoom is trying to "curry favor" with China's Communist Party.

The senator also recalled in April when Zoom said it had "mistakenly" routed some users' calls through servers in China, sparking privacy and security concerns.

In some ways the news of Zoom censoring Tiananmen Square memorials mirrors concerns by US lawmakers around the wildly popular short-form video app TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance. Reports surfaced last year that TikTok's moderators had been instructed to censor mentions of politically contentious issues and events including Tiananmen Square, sparking fears that this could mean China's censorship laws could be enforced against users outside of China.

The key difference is that while TikTok is owned by ByteDance, Zoom is an American company.

"One would have thought that a supposedly American company whose claim to fame is serving a fast, virtually seamless video chat would value free speech," Hawley wrote. "But your company appears to have chosen censorship instead."

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• Uber passengers and drivers in the UK will have to wear a face covering from Monday 15 June to take rides, the company announced.
• Uber drivers in London will have to take a selfie to prove they are wearing a face covering and won't be permitted to log on to accept rides otherwise.
• Riders who don't wear a face mask or face covering can be refused service by drivers.
• England is slowly opening up its nationwide lockdown, with non-essential shops set to open from Monday.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you want to take an Uber ride in the UK from Monday, you'll need to wear a face covering.

The company has mandated that both passengers and drivers will need to wear a face mask or covering while taking rides from June 15.

Passengers who refuse can be denied service by drivers, with drivers able to cancel ride requests without a penalty fee.

And drivers in London must take a selfie inside Uber's app to prove they're wearing a face mask. Uber said it will use a new object recognition feature to determine whether a driver is wearing a mask and, if they aren't, the driver won't be permitted to log in and accept fares.

Business Insider has requested clarification on what recourse drivers might have if the object recognition technology fails to recognize a face covering. We've also requested clarification on what qualifies as a face covering. UK government guidance states that a scarf or hand-made mask covering the face would count.

There will be new options inside the app for riders to provide feedback on safety precautions taken by drivers.

Drivers will also have to confirm in the app that they are both sanitizing their cars regularly and washing their hands — though with many public facilities and restaurants closed restricting bathroom access while they're working, it isn't clear how they're meant to do this.

Riders will be advised to wash their hands before taking a ride and to roll down the windows for ventilation.

Uber said it will eventually roll out the same object-recognition technology across the whole UK, and that it had distributed more than two million masks to drivers across the country, as well as cleaning spray and hand sanitizer.

The news comes as two British Uber drivers argue a case against the government in the High Court, accusing ministers of failing to protect low-paid gig workers during the pandemic. Ride hailing has fallen drastically around the world over the last three months as countries maintained strict lockdowns, and any drivers relying predominantly on Uber for income will have been hard hit. In a statement on Thursday one of the drivers in the claim, Ahmad Adiatu, said he had no income but still had to pay monthly costs around car maintenance and insurance that totalled up to £1,000.

In March, Uber said ridership was down as much as 70% in cities most affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

The UK has been among the hardest hit by the coronavirus, with more than 40,000 deaths to date and a delayed lockdown. England is slowly emerging from its lockdown, with non-essential shops reopening from Monday and more relaxed rules around visiting friends and family.

Uber UK country manager Jamie Heywood said in a statement: "For months we've been urging people to stay home, for their safety and the safety of drivers who make essential trips.

"Now, as cities begin to reopen and people start moving again, we're taking measures to help everyone stay safe and healthy every time they use Uber. We've introduced measures to ensure that every driver can access the PPE they need for free to help keep them. safe when driving with Uber, and from Monday, we will require anyone using the Uber app in the UK to wear a face covering."

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• Facebook's $400 million acquisition of the popular GIF site Giphy is under scrutiny by the UK's competition authority.
• The Competition and Markets Authority on Friday issued an initial enforcement order, which means the two companies must remain separate while it conducts its initial investigation.
• Australia is also probing the deal.
• Facebook had earlier shot back at concerns that it was buying Giphy in order to access more data about people's habits.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook's $400 million acquisition of popular GIF site Giphy is being probed by the UK's competition watchdog.

Facebook announced it was buying Giphy, a searchable library of shareable images, in May. The company said Giphy will be folded into the team at Facebook-owned Instagram and its vast library of GIFs will continue to operate separately.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority on Friday said it had issued an initial enforcement order, which essentially stops the two companies from integrating while the watchdog conducts its initial investigation. As yet, the CMA hasn't determined whether it will conduct an in-depth probe.

While both Giphy and Facebook are US businesses, the CMA can investigate cases where the firm being bought makes £70 million or more in UK revenue, or where the combined businesses boast a combined UK market share of at least 25%.

In its update, the CMA didn't say why it was probing the deal other than the fact it had competition concerns, though those concerns may hinge on Facebook's increased access to user data.

A Facebook spokesman told Business Insider: "GIPHY improves Instagram's offerings by giving people more features and tools.

"Developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY, and GIPHY's creative community will still be able to create great content. We are prepared to show regulators that this acquisition is positive for consumers, developers, and content creators alike."

At the time of the acquisition, there was speculation that buying Giphy would give Facebook a new lens on what services were popular with users. Since Giphy integrates with services such as Twitter, TikTok, and Slack, theoretically Facebook could gain further insight into how its rivals are being used.

But Facebook executive Adam Mosseri, the self-described "sponsor" of the deal, said at the time that data "was not the motivation."

He said : "Yes, data is valuable, but GIPHY has little user data. The API, which comprises the vast majority of usage as you say, includes an optional ID which can be anything. APIs have access to IPs in general, but most major platforms, ourselves included, proxy via a server side call.

He continued: "The data about competitors is also limited to how often people search for GIFs and what they search for, and developers can easily manipulate the API calls they make."

The CMA probe comes after Australia also announced it would investigate the deal this week.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• A new McKinsey report says that $265 billion in new or shifting profits are at stake as the construction industry invests more in technology.
• This transformation, already underway, has been accelerated by the coronavirus crisis, with 50% of the construction experts surveyed by McKinsey saying they've increased their investment in technology since the virus hit. 
• While the changes will disrupt the whole construction value chain, the biggest impacts will be on the contractor and subcontractor labor field, design and engineering, and material production and logistics. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

 A $265 billion pool of annual profits is up for grabs for construction companies that invest technology and digitalization, according to a new report from McKinsey Global Institute. 

This shift, already underway, has been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, and the unprecedented amount of remote work that followed. 

The report, published on Thursday, found that 40% to 45% of construction incumbents' value added in certain segments, such as design and engineering or actual contracting, is at risk in the face of increasing tech adoption.

The report estimated that players that "move fast and manage to radically outperform their competitors could grab the lion's share of the $265 billion in new and shifting profits and see valuations more akin to those of Silicon Valley start-ups than traditional construction firms."

In a call with the press on Tuesday, Jan Mischke, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute stressed just how existential this particular moment is: "Companies need to move now or be left behind." 

Construction's lack of digitization, compared to industries like manufacturing or logistics, had kept the industry from seeing a drastic increase in productivity, McKinsey found.

But in the last few years construction technology has gone from an extremely niche industry to one of the buzziest sectors in venture capital. 

The latest McKinsey report said it expects the coronavirus to accelerate that growth. McKinsey surveyed around 100 experts and construction executives, half have already increased their investments in tech since the pandemic began. 

Read more: 7 top VC investors reveal where real-estate tech portfolios are hurting the most and what they need to stay alive through a year of crises

Mischke said that some of the people they talked to said they were now squeezing their five-year plan for tech adoption into a six month period to accelerate the rate of change. As in every industry, the shift into remote work has highlighted exactly why a digital workflow is so much more efficient.

Construction executives had a number of realizations during the crisis, said Maria João Ribeirinho, a McKinsey partner and global leader of the firm's engineering and construction practice, on the call. 

"It is not okay to get to your construction project and have to deal with a bunch of paperwork or have to do 10 phone calls to see that your materials end up on-site in time," she added.

The transformation in the industry, which could lead to a 60% increase in productivity over time, will turn a localized and fragmented industry into one that is consolidated and focuses on buildings as if they were repeatable products, instead of one-off projects. It will be driven by both new entrants, like SoftBank's Katerra, and from more traditional builders. 

While there are potential impacts across the construction value chain, companies in the design and engineering, materials, and general and specialist contracting fields will see the biggest potential impact. In design and engineering, new software will reduce the amount of human input necessary in building, while materials companies, powered by recent changes in logistics, will become much more efficient, and likely cheaper. 

Contracting and subcontracting may also see big hits, as easier offsite construction and modular building will require less labor than traditional building techniques. 

Read more: 5 startup founders explain how they reimagined an old-school industry to break into the buzzy construction-tech scene

Mischke noted that private equity has taken a very close interest in the industry, investing in both innovative startups and in more traditional building companies that are adopting technology.

In 2019, Goldman Sachs' venture-capital arm made an investment in Built Technologies, a construction lending platform, and in TopHat, a modular housing company.

Alternatively, private equity may also seek out underperforming companies to transform by connecting them with innovative technology.

The public sector, which Mischke said is the "single biggest constructor" will also be key, both in the types of buildings and infrastructure they have built and in the way they adjust regulations to accommodate technological change.

Another key element to this change will be attracting Silicon Valley-type tech talent to an industry that isn't typically known for its innovativeness. In order for that to happen, firms will need to show a commitment to using new technologies.

"We need a renovation of the sector to attract more diverse and more digital talent," Ribeirinho said.

Read more: 

• The CEO of real estate heavy-hitter Eastdil explains the types of deals that are must-do right now — and warns that a 'de-retailing' trend is set to accelerate
• Here's which real-estate tech startups will soar and which will flop in the new normal of how we occupy space, according to 7 top proptech VCs
• Companies need to add contactless-entry tech to safely reopen offices. Here are 7 firms ranging from startups to huge conglomerates that are set for a surge in business

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SEE ALSO: Venture capitalists worry about their portfolio companies' cash runways and their ability to adapt to the conditions of the coronavirus crisis. BI Prime FINANCE Jun 4, 2020, 10:29 AM conan shorty power broker Here are 27 books on real-estate personalities and power players that industry insiders say you need to have on your bookshelf Titles ranged from "Power Broker," the classic biography of NYC planner Robert Moses, to a novel about a 19th-century real estate developer. BI Prime FINANCE Jun 2, 2020, 8:00 AM Matt Roberts_Vacasa CEO Silver Lake just added to a string of bets in the struggling travel sector by leading a $108 million investment in vacation property startup Vacasa Silver Lake's investment in Vacasa, North America's largest vacation property-management company, follows bets on Airbnb and Expedia. BI Prime FINANCE Jun 1, 2020, 11:41 AM man in protective suit disinfecting office work space Companies need to add contactless-entry tech to safely reopen offices. Here are 7 firms ranging from startups to huge conglomerates that are set for a surge in business. A CBRE report found that half of companies are considering adding contactless access control. Here's 7 companies who will benefit. NEWS May 31, 2020, 5:06 PM uber ceo dara khosrowshahi Uber CEO tweets that the company will donate $1 million to groups 'making criminal justice in America more just for all' The company is donating $1 million in total to two criminal justice reform groups "in solidarity with the Black community and with peaceful protests." BI Prime FINANCE May 28, 2020, 1:29 PM Lucas Haldeman SmartRent A smart home startup just raised $60 million from Amazon, Fifth Wall, and Bain days after launching an app that lets residents give remote access for deliveries, guests, and self-guided tours SmartRent provides keyless entry, smart lights, and other software for apartment units and was launched by former Invitation Homes and Starwood Waypoint executives. BI Prime FINANCE May 26, 2020, 10:00 AM VergeSense CEO Dan Ryan VergeSense, an office-sensor startup that tracks employees' movements, just nabbed $9 million. From social distancing scores to real-time occupancy alerts, here's its pitch to big companies on its tech. JLL and MetaProp-backed VergeSense's raised the money in a round led by Allegion Ventures, the corporate venture fund of security and access control company Allegion. BI Prime FINANCE May 20, 2020, 3:05 PM Regina Benjamin Zillow is restarting its iBuyer business with the help of a former US surgeon general. She laid out how the company will get home-flipping up and running safely. Dr. Regina Benjamin has helped the company develop protocols to prevent the transmission of coronavirus during Zillow's home tours. BI Prime FINANCE May 20, 2020, 1:01 PM Anthony Noto SoFi just cut 7% of staff based on performance reviews, and is eliminating a team by automating it away. The moves come a month after the fintech announced a $1.2 billion acquisition. Personal finance fintech SoFi has cut about 7% of its staff, or roughly 112 people, following its most recent round of quarterly performance reviews. BI Prime FINANCE May 18, 2020, 9:59 AM reopening office disinfecting office coronavirus Global firms are cutting down on their real-estate footprint as CEOs across industries are considering a permanent switch to remote work Business Insider spoke to roughly 200 CEOs about coronavirus's impact. Remote work will become more common, but the future of the office is uncertain. BI Prime FINANCE May 15, 2020, 7:30 AM Constance Freedman, founder and managing partner, Moderne Ventures Here's which real-estate tech startups will soar and which will flop in the new normal of how we occupy space, according to 7 top proptech VCs Flexible office, hospitality and retail startups are hard hit, while sanitation startups are one of the biggest new winners in the proptech space. BI Prime FINANCE May 12, 2020, 6:45 PM Zeus Living Founders Airbnb-backed Zeus Living slashes almost half of its remaining staff less than two months after a round of layoffs Last week, the company raised a down round that halved its valuation to $110 million, Bloomberg reported. BI Prime FINANCE May 12, 2020, 11:51 AM JLL Christian Ulbrich 10 CEOs from Coldwell Banker, JLL, Cushman Wakefield, and more lay out a post-pandemic future of how we'll buy, build, and use real estate The crisis has accelerated trends toward technology and remote work that are already underway in the real estate world. 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WeWork acquired the Flatiron School in 2017 for $28 million and has been cutting jobs across departments. BI Prime FINANCE May 6, 2020, 3:57 PM blackstone heads of acquisition and origination 43 Meet the 4 dealmakers driving Blackstone's $325 billion commercial real estate portfolio. They walked us through how they're thinking about opportunities in the downturn. These four are private equity real estate power players. Blackstone's portfolio grew post-2008, and it's looking at new opportunity amid the pandemic. BI Prime FINANCE May 1, 2020, 11:22 AM Sandeep Mathrani WeWork is rolling out global layoffs over Zoom and has kicked off talks to slash jobs in the UK as the coworking giant struggles to cope with coronavirus fallout Other venture-backed competitors, like Knotel, Industrious, and Convene, have laid off hundreds as the pandemic has driven down demand for offices. BI Prime FINANCE Apr 30, 2020, 7:58 AM Ryan Gorman, CEO of Coldwell Banker The future of real estate could be virtual open houses on Facebook. Coldwell Banker's CEO explains why the in-person industry needs to embrace going digital. The firm is working with Facebook to help agents use Facebook Live to host open houses for potential buyers and for their wider community. VIEW MORE by TaboolaVIDEOS YOU MAY LIKE

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• Ameelio is an app that will take your typed message and whose team will then print it into a physical letter to be mailed to the author's incarcerated loved one.
• The service is available on desktop, not the mobile app just yet, and provides a free alternative to pricey call services that are currently available to incarcerated people.
• As the COVID-19 pandemic bans in-person visits to prisons for the time being, many families are faced with the burden of sky-high calling fees.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Prisons have been hotspots for the spread of the coronavirus, forcing facilities across the US to ban in-person visits and leaving inmates with only costly methods of staying in touch with family — companies like Securus and Global Tel Link can charge up to $25 for a single 15-minute phone call. 

So the team behind Ameelio is striving to provide a service that allows for free communication between users and their incarcerated loved ones.

The company — founded by Yale Law students Uzoma Orchingwa and Gabriel Saruhashi — launched a program called Letters two months ago, according to Fast Company. It allows you to type and submit a message that is then printed by the company and sent to the recipient in prison. The letters are completely free and can be as long as 1,500 words.

Research shows that maintaining contact with family while incarcerated lowers the chance of being imprisoned again after release, as Fast Company notes.

According to the Ameelio website, the app serves all prisons, jails, and detention facilities in the US. It also helps you locate the intended recipient's inmate ID and the correct address and covers the cost of the mail service.

The company said it delivered 2,800 letters to inmates in 563 detention facilities across 47 US states, according to CNET. And since anyone can use the service, users aren't geographically limited — users from 15 countries have used Ameelio.

The service is available on desktop currently, but the mobile app won't launch in the App Store and on Google Play for another couple of weeks, CEO Uzoma Orchingwa told Business Insider in an email. The company plans to eventually offer videoconferencing as well. 

Now that inmates have to rely on remote communication entirely, some states have been providing inmates with free and discounted phone and video calls, as Business Insider's Paige Leskin previously reported. 

Some advocates have argued that it should be free to make calls from state prisons, and both New York City and San Francisco have made it free to do so from city jails. Low-income Americans are disproportionately likely to be imprisoned, as Fast Company notes, and many aren't able to afford the high-cost calling services that dominate the market.

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• As TikTok stars move to Los Angeles to pursue careers in entertainment, many are getting houses together to collaborate and pitch themselves to brands as creator collectives.
• But while moving into a mansion with friends and creators is appealing on its surface, the reality of growing a "collab house" into a sustainable business can be complicated. 
• Devion Young founded the TikTok house Drip Crib in February, investing tens of thousands of dollars of his own money in an LA mansion that he hoped would draw in brand sponsors.
• But just a few months after moving in, Young is behind on rent and facing threats of potential legal action from the property's rental management company.
• This week, Young went through a public and contentious split with Drip Crib's talent management firm, Influences, with both parties citing disputes around their management agreement and the handling of conversations with the house's landlord as breaking points. 
• Click here to sign up for Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

Living in a mansion with your friends. Earning money and freebies from brands. Gaining instant fame. 

These are the supposed perks of joining an influencer "content house," a phenomenon started by Vine and YouTube creators in which social-media stars live together in order to collaborate and more easily pitch themselves to brands.

And as the short-form video app TikTok has surged, a slew of new "collab" houses full of its stars have popped up around Los Angeles in recent months.

But while fast-tracking internet stardom by moving into a content house is appealing on its surface, the reality is that running a social-media group as a business is more complicated than the carefree life often depicted on Instagram or TikTok.

The founder of a new TikTok house Drip Crib, the Instagram creator and musician Devion Young, understands that all too well. 

Young started the house in Los Angeles in February, and Drip Crib is already experiencing an array of challenges that threaten to derail the project, from overdue rent and a real-estate company threatening legal action, to a public and contentious split with Drip Crib's management firm this week.

Drip Crib is one of several new TikTok collab houses that have encountered internal issues in recent months. Members of the popular influencer group The Hype House have tussled over trademark disputes this year, and several residents of the TikTok house Sway LA recently left their Bel Air mansion shortly after two of the house's members were arrested on drug charges in Texas.

The challenges that have emerged among co-living TikTokkers echo similar concerns that cropped up years ago when some of YouTube's original stars first began bunking together.

Disputes with Drip Crib's landlord and its former manager

For Young, the goal of founding a TikTok collab house became a reality earlier this year when he spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money to rent a mansion in Los Angeles that would become the home of the Drip Crib. 

"I committed to the process of looking for people and really putting it together around December," Young told Business Insider in an interview in May. "A lot of us already followed each other and we were already acquainted and we met at parties or something, so we were already within the same social group."

The Drip Crib property that Young rented, referred to as "Comber Retreat" by its rental management company, is located in the heart of Los Angeles' social-media scene just a few minutes away from residences of top YouTubers like Logan Paul and James Charles, Young said.

The house's defining feature, a waterfall that streams beneath an opening in its outdoor pool deck, helped inspire the name "Drip Crib." House members and visitors often film themselves jumping into the pool from its balcony in videos (these posts are frequently flagged by TikTok with a disclaimer that "the action in this video could result in serious injury").

As with any collab house upstart, Young hoped to work with other house members to cross promote each other's accounts, create videos with other influencers passing through (when shelter-in-places policies are lifted in Los Angeles), attract sponsorship deals from brands, and as a music artist, produce songs with some of the other house's residents.

"What we're working towards is getting a few big brands to sponsor the house as a whole," Young told Business Insider in May. "And then pretty much we would use that for all expenses and rent."

But just a few months after Drip Crib's launch, the project's future has encountered big obstacles. 

Young told Business Insider on Wednesday that he was behind on rent payments to the house's rental management company, The Maimon Group. Renting the house costs nearly $20,000 per month, according to the real estate company's website. The Maimon Group told Business Insider that it planned to take legal action against Young due to unpaid rent, though it had not done so yet.

The Maimon Group also alleged to Business Insider that the house had been damaged during Young's tenure. The company listed "painting stuff on the grass," "jumping off couches," and "jumping from the roof" as examples. But Young told Business Insider that he wasn't aware of any damage to the property beyond a latch coming off the house's front gate. He said that he received a letter from his landlord accusing the house's residents of doing "major production filming," which Young denied had happened.

"We're talking about a reality show but we've never filmed anything," Young said. "We've never had a crew come. All we've had is TikTok and Instagram."

Besides Drip Crib's landlord, Young has also been at odds with its former manager, Ariadna Jacob, whose talent firm Influences manages a couple other TikTok-focused creator properties in Los Angeles called Girls in the Valley and Kids Next Door.

Earlier this week, Young and Jacob severed ties. Both parties cited to Business Insider disputes around their management agreement and the handling of conversations with the house's landlord as breaking points in their business relationship. 

"We don't want to get involved in any of that legal stuff," Jacob told Business Insider.

Young told Business Insider that he's working with a lawyer and hopes to come to a resolution with The Maimon Group soon. 

But the drama isn't stopping the Drip Crib house residents from having a bit of fun. They are still living at the house, and appeared to host a gathering, according to videos posted by Young and another Drip Crib group member this week on Instagram.

For more on how creators and talent managers are building businesses on social media, check out these other Business Insider Prime posts:

• A new TikTok influencer mansion 'Drip Crib' wants to snag brand sponsorships with an in-house waterfall and music talent: While the Hype House and Sway LA have dominated media coverage recently, smaller upstart "collab" houses like Drip Crib are opening up in the city.
• A TikTok influencer group shares the exact 8-page media kit it's using to pitch brand sponsorships of a new collab house: Girls in the Valley, a new TikTok collab house, is launching at a time when in-person socializing is off limits because of the coronavirus outbreak.
• A crew of TikTok stars lives rent-free in a Bel Air mansion, but at Sway House you have to meet your content quota: TalentX Entertainment put six of its top TikTok stars in a house in Los Angeles. Here's what the agency has planned for its influencers this year.
• Inside YouTube star Brent Rivera's content company, which created a superhero for TikTok and wants to become the next Disney Channel: Amp Studios is a talent incubator and content group founded by the 22-year-old YouTuber Brent Rivera and his manager and business partner, Max Levine.

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