Between 2 cacti, from Scottsdale Living, featuring Irina and Igor Ilyinsky, of JoinListenUp.com

John Doering, Realtor at My Home Group and founder of Scottsdale Living brings you the JoinListenUp.com story.
Husband and wife co-founders, Irina and Igor Ilyinsky, introduce ListenUp, a tech start-up and community storytelling app that combines crowdsourcing and Artificial Intelligence to create hyperlocal community stories and deliver them to users via audio in up to 22 languages. The app launches in January, just in time for millions to pour into Phoenix for the Super Bowl, providing an excellent audio resource for visitors especially, to level up their Phoenix experience by hearing about all the valley has to offer through its culture, natural beauty, and historic neighborhoods and destinations of interest. The free-to-use app also allows local businesses to participate and share their stories and details about their locations to attract a passerby for a small fee.

Described as an app that tells you about where you are, wherever you are, the product was conceived from the couple’s own frustrations while traveling in Europe with their teenage daughters. After downloading and sampling dozens of apps promising immersive tourism experiences that fell flat on that promise, the entrepreneurial

the couple identified the need for an open platform that would intelligently offer local information in a safe, screenless, and customizable way.

“We see there being a major hole in this category,” explains co-founder Igor Ilyinsky. “We know that audio is the new frontier, but audio content hasn’t changed in a century. ListenUp provides a solution, bringing forth contextual content based on whatever could be interesting to users depending on where they are, what they are doing, and about 20 other factors that digital devices can detect or guess.” With ListenUp, the museum experience doesn’t stop the moment they exit the museum. Instead, imagine leaving that museum and having continuous entertainment and information in your ear based on your location, engaging you with stories about the neighborhood, historic buildings up ahead of you, or the origins of the little mom-and-pop restaurant down the street.

As an added incentive and benefit for natural storytellers, educators, and social media users who love to post and share their favorite city finds, the founders have designed a
blockchain-based incentivization model, where tokens will eventually, be distributed in addition to experiences and benefits special to those in the ListenUp community. A user
does not need to be set up with a cryptocurrency account, however, to experience or contribute to the audio app.
Igor and Irina Ilyinsky are both Soviet immigrants who faced uncertainty from an early age. “It’s a privilege to be able to help people learn about the places they visit or wherever they move to, especially refugees, such as those that recently arrived from Afghanistan or Ukraine,'' says co-founder Irina Ilyinsky. “We don’t take for granted that we now live in a safe country. Globally, people are still displaced daily, and many are finding their way to Phoenix. As much as we want to offer entertainment to tourists, our work will also expedite the assimilation of refugees. It can be quite a culture shock to move from Afghanistan to a fluctuating tourist destination like Scottsdale and we hope ListenUp can help make the city feel less intimidating and more exciting and soon familiar to those finding their way here.”

For further information, please visit http://joinlistenup.com/.

Between 2 cacti, from Scottsdale Living, featuring Irina and Igor Ilyinsky, of JoinListenUp.com