LEAFWIRE – poised for international growth. As cannabis legalisation slowly spreads across progressive global countries, the need for a platform fostering a safe harbor for topical discourse and transactional business has positioned, Leafwire, the world’s largest cannabis business network for success.
In November 2012, Colorado and Washington State voters ushered in radically new recreational cannabis laws allowing for cultivation, production, distribution, and sale of products to adults over 21. Since then, several states’ voters and legislatures followed suit, bringing with them more and more jobs, employees, professionals, transactions, connections, and ultimately, conversations and content.
But legalisation doesn’t bring along with it destigmatisation. The topic of cannabis, and its myriad pejoratives like “pot,” “weed,” and even “marijuana,” doesn’t always sit well in a traditional business setting. The same is true for an online platform–cannabis business professionals aren’t always comfortable sharing and conversing about the plant in an open business forum like LinkedIn.
A product of Denver, Colorado, cannabis-focused social media platform Leafwire was developed, and has emerged, to fill that same globally-expanding need
“When we first launched Leafwire to a primarily domestic, U.S. audience in 2018, marijuana still had a stigma around it despite emerging statewide legalization to one degree or another. said Peter Vogel, founder and CEO of Leafwire.“Four years later, significant progress has been made in state cannabis legalization, but that stigma still very much remains.”
Leafwire Cannabis Business Social Network
Leafwire has become the largest cannabis business network in the world, home to 50,000 registered cannabis professionals across more than 100 countries. Leafwire’s global event calendar boasts over 100 events from Switzerland to Colombia to Texas, some with discounts of up to 50% for Leafwire members.
The platform’s job board features more than 10,000 jobs, from a VP of operations and extraction in Arizona, to a sanitation supervisor in Virginia.
International Legalisation
Two years after Colorado and Washington’s major cannabis legalization measures, a 2016 study by the Adam Smith Institute in the U.K. argued the growing international “Tide” of mainstream acceptance, understanding and support for legalization of cannabis will ultimately force drug reform in the country and across the globe. It considered the gradual, steady shift in European and North American sentiment around cannabis a strong suggestion the U.K. should follow suit in reevaluating its current laws around the plant.
Three years later, in November 2019, the National Institute for Health and Social Care Excellence (NICE) published guidance on prescribing cannabis-based medicinal products for people with intractable nausea and vomiting, chronic pain, spasticity and severe treatment-resistant epilepsy.
The theory held true for neighboring countries like Germany, where full recreational cannabis legalization has become the topic du jour, with federal regulators committing to make laws an eventual reality. And in a startling development, Thailand made it legal to grow and trade marijuana, becoming the first country in Asia to do so, even distributing one million cannabis plants so people are able to cultivate plants at home.
Much in the same way the cannabis plant spread across the world throughout the centuries, so to, has the need for a modern day digital platform to conduct safe, secure, effective business discourse about the world’s most exciting crop.
“As emerging markets in Europe continue to liberalise cannabis policy, a stigma-free platform like Leafwire provides a big appeal to industry participants,” said Anuj Desai, Podcast Host of ‘The Cannabis Conversation,’ and practicing attorney. “Sharing insights and learnings, as well as job and business opportunities, is critical for the development of the sector.”
The Rise Of Specialised Social Networks
A Platform for Increased Privacy
Mainstream social media platforms like Facebook have faced public and legislative criticism for how they mine and sell user data, leaving users overwhelmingly concerned about the privacy and security of their accounts.
The appeal of exclusive social media platforms like Leafwire is that they protect user data from third-party interests and do not monetize the data. This, breeds an element of trust and security that Leafwire users have with the platform and liberates them to more openly share their data.
A Judgment-Free Experience
Planet Fitness, Inc. (NYSE: PLNT), one of the largest and fastest-growing franchisors and operators of fitness centers in the U.S., and home of the “Judgement Free Zone®,” was named to Fortune magazine’s 2019 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list, ranking 58 among the world’s top three-year performers in revenues, profits, and stock returns.
The reason for this is, in part, because the gym prides itself on its philosophy of fostering a “no judgement” environment. Plastered across the gym are reminders that it’s a “judgment free zone,” emphasizing that members “belong” in the community they have joined.
Leafwire’s cannabis social network offers precisely this same type of unique “belonging” in what is a very niche, exclusive industry. In so doing, the platform encourages members to freely share their insights and opinions on policies, news, and affairs that they might otherwise be reluctant to divulge in a more public social media forum.
The FOMO Factor
Exclusive social media platforms like Leafwire tap into the scarcity effect, or the cognitive bias that makes us place a higher value on things that are scarce or limited. While access to social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are ubiquitous, the industry-exclusive, topic-driven nature of Leafwire galvanizes its “cool factor.”
Exclusive social media platforms like Leafwire have fulfilled a desire for “in-crowd” status where on-topic interactions on other social media networks can be lost in the wealth of other off-topic discussions.
Limited Access to Traditional Social Networks
Leafwire’s most direct mainstream competitor is LinkedIn, yet, LinkedIn is primarily a United States social media phenomenon. Across the globe, not all countries (1) have access to the social media platform, (2), and none have actively adopted it across business to the degree the U.S. has.
Not only does Leafwire fulfill a need to provide a “stigma-free” online space for business dialogue, so to, does it provide a single platform to connect the global cannabis community with U.S. counterparts.
“Leafwire, as a cannabis-focused platform, can really help progress this for the European business community, as well as provide an excellent way to connect with North American counterparts,” Desai said.
All this points to a glaring opening and need for a cannabis-niche social media platform like Leafwire to move into the global market with less competitive pressure. And already positioned as the world’s largest of such networks, Leafwire has an undisputed first-mover’s advantage in further growing and securing the top global spot.
“We invite like-minded cannabis professionals to join the specialised, exclusive Leafwire business network, as it continues to grow both domestically here in the U.S., and well as abroad,” said Vogel.
