LinkedIn Launches Events to Facilitate Professional Meet-Ups

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As you can see from the video, LinkedIn users will now be able to create their own event pages via the Community panel to the left side of the News Feed in the mobile app.

As explained by LinkedIn:

"You need to provide a description, a date and time, a venue, and then invite your connections using filters such as location, company, industry, and school. We also recommend you share the event as a post to leverage the power of the feed to reach relevant attendees. From your event page, you can easily track attendees and invitees, post updates and interact with other attendees."

The functionality is similar to Facebook events, making it easy to organize meet-ups. And given the professional nature of LinkedIn, the option will no doubt come in handy - in fact, it's kind of surprising LinkedIn hasn't launched it until now.  

Both organizers and attendees will be able to send event invitations to their connections - though if an event is marked as private, the organizer will need to provide permission for attendees to invite their connections. Once you've accepted an event invite, you'll have access to a list of all the LinkedIn members who'll be attending with you. LinkedIn says that this is a great place to start interacting with other attendees, "as you can invite them to connect before you meet at the event." 

"You can also participate in discussions with other attendees by posting and joining conversations in the event feed".

As noted, given the fit with LinkedIn's professional networking focus, it's somewhat surprising that LinkedIn Events hasn't always been a thing, though there are, of course, privacy and functional considerations that the company would have needed to assess.

The option aligns with LinkedIn's other event tools, like event frames which, where available, attendees can overlay on their images and videos posted to the platform.

The option serves a clear, functional purpose in LinkedIn's system, and will no doubt be a popular addition.

LinkedIn does note that it's not available to all users as yet - though, anyone can join an event if they receive an invitation. LinkedIn says it will be making events more widely available very soon.