As of today, LinkedIn is shutting down its LinkedIn Events application. As you can see, the events industry is gnashing its teeth over this move. The events side of the app has been long used as a marketing element for many B2B event organisers and even as a revenue generator because of its power to highlight upcoming events. However, YC-graduate startup Lanyrd hopes to fill the gap today by integrating with LinkedIn and loosening its previously strong ties with Twitter buy allowing a registration outside of the social network.
The idea, of course, is to allow LinkedIn users to discover conferences and events based on their LinkedIn connections and profile information. LinkedIn users will also now be able to use Lanyrd to build their own speaker profiles, get event information on a mobile and network at events. In turn, event organisers will now be able to use Lanyrd to promote events, publish event schedules and gather together slides, notes and videos once the event has ended. This makes a heck of a lot more sense than Twitter perhaps, given the business audience.
So far Lanyrd is carrying over 25,000 events from 100+ countries around the world, with profiles acting like a speakers portfolio.
Location-based events apps like Bizzabo, Highlig.ht and Shhmooze are doing interesting likes like adding location to events, but what they’ve lacked really is content. Lanyrd has much of the content required of these events – now all it has to do is add more location features.
