The End of LinkedIn Events… Here are some alternatives

LinkedIn Event Shutdown

LinkedIn recently announced that they would be shutting down their LinkedIn Events application on November 26, 2012. SAY WHAT!?!?! I suspect there will be two reactions to this…

1. There was a LinkedIn Events applications?

2. NO WAY!!!!! I LOVED LINKEDIN EVENTS!

I fall more into the latter camp than the former but I won’t be crying myself to sleep tonight over this intel.

The End for LinkedIn Events

Buried deep in their navigation bar under the More item, lived the Events page. You could browse events and find interesting events that connections in your network were organizing or attending. You could also post upcoming events and promote them through your network and the LinkedIn Events page. It worked great and lots of people used it. Unfortunately, LinkedIn didn’t talk much about it and hid it in their navigation bar so there were a lot of people who didn’t even know it existed.

Just a few days ago LinkedIn posted:

LinkedIn will be shutting off the LinkedIn Events application effective November 26, 2012.

LinkedIn Events ShutdownAt LinkedIn, we want to provide a simple and efficient experience for all members. So from time to time, we take a look at our set of features to evaluate how they’re being used by our members. Part of this process sometimes means we decide to eliminate a feature, so we can better invest our development resources in building more great LinkedIn products for members like you.

There are still many ways to spread the word about upcoming events. You can always share links about events from your homepage, or in relevant groups.

Clearly LinkedIn is realizing that they need to evolve and recently we’ve seen A LOT of changes to LinkedIn. It’s important that they use their resources on items that show ROI and LinkedIn events simply didn’t move them closer to their established goals.

I used LinkedIn events to promote my presentations and I often found success with it. With that said, there are many other sites out there that provide a similar service and so the loss of LinkedIn Events won’t be too painful.

LinkedIn Events Alternative Services

Those of you who weren’t even aware of this feature will continue to live your lives unaffected… but what about the other half! What will we do? How will we find events to attend or promote events we’re organizing!?!?

Here are two LinkedIn Event alternatives:

Meetup

“Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 9,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.”

Meetup is a great place to find local events and post and promote your events. You will find both personal and professional events posted on Meetup. Meetup is great for events that repeat and they make it easy to keep attendees reminded of upcoming events.

Meetup

Eventbrite

“Eventbrite is an online service that people everywhere use to create, share, and join any event imaginable.[Eventbrite] enables event creation, promotion and ticket sales. [Eventbrite] helps people discover events that match their passions. And lets everyone share the events they’re creating or joining, bringing more people together around the world.”

Eventbrite helps you perform ticketing for events and also deals with both personal and professional events. It’s great for one time, ticketed events or events with a set guest list.

Eventbrite

Which one do I choose?

The main difference between Meetup and Eventbrite is community. Meetup has a very large, active community of users that you can leverage. Although you can promote via Eventbrite, much of the promotion takes place on other social networks as opposed to within their network of users. Meetup works great for FREE events and although Eventbrite can also be used for free events, Eventbrite specializes in ticketing and ticket sales.

The other thing to think about is if your event repeats. Meetup is perfect for groups who meet regularly. Eventbrite fits well with events that occur once or have a set guest list.

So How Do I Promote My Events On LinkedIn?

Just because you are using a 3rd party events application doesn’t mean you can’t leverage your LinkedIn Network for promotion. Here are some ways to notify your network of your upcoming event:

1. LinkedIn Status Update
Post a link to the event as a Status Update. This will go out to your network and allow them to click the link to learn more.

2. LinkedIn Groups
Post a link to the event within the groups that you are involved in on LinkedIn. Start a discussion, post the link to the event and tell people why attending the event is beneficial to them. Don’t just blindly post the link to all your Groups. Choose Groups that you are involved in and that the members would benefit from the information.

3. LinkedIn Messages
Do a LinkedIn Search for people who would benefit from attending the event. You could search via industry, job title or even location. Filter the results by 1st degree connections. Go through the resulting list and email the people individually about the event. DO NOT SPAM! Personally invite them and tell them exactly why you are reaching out to them and how the event would help them.

Onward and Upward!

As much as it’s hard to see functionality disappear from LinkedIn, it’s nice to know they are conserving their efforts and really focusing on their goals. The LinkedIn Events was a great application and although it’s hard to see it go, there are alternatives that work just as well.. heck, they work even better!

If you have any additional sites that make good alternatives to LinkedIn Events, please leave a comment on this post.

Bye Bye, LinkedIn Events! It was nice knowing you!

Bye Bye LinkedIn Events Page, it was nice knowing you!

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6 Comments

  1. I am shocked! I have used the Event App in many occasions to know attendees before any event took place. I think that it was a great tool for business networking.

    I had a chance to used the event app for the past Google Analytics Partner Summit in Montain View (https://goo.gl/OJav3). I did create an event before attending and got to know 70 partners before the event so had a chance to create a better agenda.

    I also used the same way for the Facebook Hack Event in Barcelona (https://www.fbworldhack.com/). I think that Linked in has not being able to transmit to user the potential that this app has for net working. I am sad about this and I hope that they may reconsider to have it back.

  2. Thanks for this update. I fall into both categories, there was a linked in meet up app and now it’s gone! You’re right about Eventbrite, not so good if you are wanting to leverage traffic of a social media platform, having used it to promote events before. But good for earning credibility for your event and payment system.

  3. I just found out now as I just wanted to figure out who on LinkedIn is attending a conference or other event.
    The ability to get to someone’s LinkedIn profile directly from the event, and send them a message, was something I used a lot. I do believe this is a great loss and am quite disappointed.

    This use case isn’t so much about promoting an event, it’s more about cherry-picking people to network with before a business event started.

    For this purpose, I think these two alternatives aren’t as interesting. Meetup seems to be all about meeting in a non-professional context (searching for ‘GDC’, the biggest conference in the video games industry isn’t returning anything), and Eventbrite is more focused on the ticketing and on a private guest list system for the event organizer rather than being able to network with event attendees before the event starts.

    The thing that seems to be close to the LinkedIn events are Facebook events, but not every business user is as active on Facebook, and there’s usually no direct link between someone’s Facebook and LinkedIn account.

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