LinkedIn Events to launch tomorrow bringing competition to Meetup and Facebook

LinkedIn is launching tomorrow a new feature that enables members to create, share, and discover professional networking events taking place in their city and local area. LinkedIn Events is available to all users on LinkedIn globally, starting first with English-speaking markets.

“At LinkedIn, our core focus is to help our members connect and build lasting professional relationships. Face-to-face interactions are key to realising this vision and bringing online communities to life. With this launch, our members now have a safe and trusted avenue to engage with their network online and offline. We see them using this product to host networking meet-ups, workshops, alumni meets, product launches, and other face-to-face gatherings,” said Ajay Datta, Head of Product, India at LinkedIn.

LinkedIn says it aims to foster offline community building, to help members nurture deeper and high-quality professional relationships. According to LinkedIn Data, people are two and a half times more likely to accept connections on LinkedIn if they have attended a face to face meeting, showing that offline community building is key to stronger working relationships.

LinkedIn Events is the first product built out of the Bengaluru R&D Centre for a global audience. “After the launch of LinkedIn Lite, I am excited to roll out our first ‘made in India, for the world’ product out of LinkedIn’s Bengaluru R&D Centre. With Events, we are now taking on a larger mandate of building products to foster offline communities and help our members connect offline. This launch showcases LinkedIn’s commitment to the Bengaluru R&D Centre and in the team’s talent in building world-class products,” added Ajay Datta.

Members can create an event by going to the ‘Community’ panel located on the left side of the newsfeed. They can click on +Create to start a new event, and provide a description, a date and time.

LinkedIn Events are public or private, and users can invite members using Invite Filters, a feature that enables users to tap into the platform’s 645+ million global professional network and filter members based on industries and job titles. LinkedIn Events will bring competition to an area mainly dominated by Meetup (owned by WeWork) and facebook.