For those of you who lost a big chunk of their social tactics with the demolition of LinkedIn Events, here is an alternative provided by Lanyrd.
Lanyrd is a serendipity engine for events. It is a British startup that offers event recommendations based on your Twitter graph.
The guys at Lanyrd brought the concept forward. Their event pages are also becoming content hubs. You can add sessions, coverage, speakers, presentations and ticketing via Eventbrite.
They are in the same space mostly with Plancast, that after being killed by its founders, it has been acquired and relaunched by Active.
Lanyrd Offers a LinkedIn Substitute
I had a chat with Simon, Lanyrd’s CEO.
He told me that when they read on this blog that LinkedIn was shutting down its event section, they decided to speed up their LinkedIn integration development.
The end result is that Lanyrd will now substitute LinkedIn for most of the tasks we appreciated LinkedIn Events for.
What is Lanyrd actually offering then?
Here it is:
– Lanyrd is launching the ability to sign in with your LinkedIn account and get event recommendations based on your LinkedIn contacts and profile information
– LinkedIn users can now benefit from Lanyrd’s directory of more than 25,000 events entered by our community in 100+ countries around the world.
– Speakers and attendees can build a profile of the events they have attended and the talks they have given. Where LinkedIn acts as your online resumé, Lanyrd can act as your online speaking portfolio.
– Users can subscribe to weekly emails recommending events based on their LinkedIn profile. As they grow their network on LinkedIn, these emails will get increasingly more relevant.
– Event organizers can use Lanyrd to promote their events, publish their event schedule both online and through our mobile apps, and gather together slides, notes and videos once the event has ended.
What to Do Now?
Simon also discussed the reason why for the first time they are venturing out of Twitter to fetch information and connection graph.
Lanyrd has in fact been until now a service for tech conferences. They are aiming to reach out to a wider audience and become what I really value as the Facebook Page for events.
Including LinkedIn means that corporate events, business conferences and the like can find in Lanyrd a perfect alternative to the professional social network.
As a planner or organizer I want you to head to Lanyrd and register your event. Add as much information possible such as speakers and sessions.
Also use tools to embed Lanyrd on your website and invite your attendees to check in or track your event.
By doing so other Lanyrd users will get notified or discover your event through their LinkedIn Network, which was the prime benefit of LinkedIn Events.
In Conclusion
I like Lanyrd’s move. They started a new feature knowing that this was a pain for the industry.
I also like the way the service is moving from being a simple serendipity engine to a more complex, crowdsourced content hub.
I have high expectations for what it is coming ahead and so should you. Therefore head to Lanyrd and register your event now.
