Live events continue to be disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, especially now Omicron is raging through Australia, which has forced businesses to find alternative means to broadcast and connect.

That partly explains why LinkedIn has experienced strong success with its Live Events (use of the function has increased by 150%). And that makes sense, because LinkedIn is a professional network where people come to connect and share knowledge.

New Audio and Video Events

In light of that strong growth, and with an end to Covid no less likely, LinkedIn has developed a range of events changes that could make it a more attractive place for business creators.

It says it wants its changes to help members create more meaningful connections than ever before, and it wants LinkedIn to be the facilitator of that.

To be fair to the network, they already do a lot of connecting. As mentioned earlier, the annual creation of Live Events has increased by 150% YOY, while there has been a 231% YOY increase in virtual event attendees.

LinkedIn wants to make it easier for businesses, industry insiders and professionals to communicate with their network.

Jake Poses, Leading Product for Video, Creators & Events, LinkedIn – via Tech Crunch

“We want to make it easier to host virtual round tables, fireside chats, and more. Some may want the event to be more formal, or less formal. Some might want to communicate with their audience, to open up to the floor. We’re giving professionals interactivity and support.”

There’s also a good chance that LinkedIn is making these changes to enable its creators to be more active on the platform. Given that LinkedIn has launched a $25 million creator fund, and provided 1.5 million creators with use of LinkedIn Live, it would make sense to provide more ways for them to gain exposure and fans.

Good news

The updates to audio and video events will give communicators two more channels to spread their message – and connect with the wider LinkedIn community. It will also help facilitate more, and higher quality, industry-aligned meetings, discussions and webinars.

LinkedIn’s discovery will recommend relevant events to users, which will help creators and communicators to spread the world and attract higher audiences. Bringing boffins together could prove to be valuable to LinkedIn, and it will create incentives for users to spend more time on the network.

The details

So then, on to these changes. LinkedIn Audio has been developed as a bit of a Clubhouse clone, and will let users listen to live discussions being held in the app. They will be able to participate by raising their hand to speak, or by posting in response to the discussion.

Users of Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces will instantly recognise the layout – with speakers on top and listeners on the bottom.

Jake Poses, Leading Product for Video, Creators & Events, LinkedIn

“We’ll kick off with a few thousand creators who will host events across different topics and themes – any member can tune in and participate. We’ll expand the ability to host Audio Events to more creators in the coming months.”

LinkedIn will also introduce Video Events later in the year, which will follow the same format as its Audio Events. The ability to host a Live Broadcast will be included as part of the video package, and that will let one person go live natively, within the LinkedIn app.

LinkedIn is betting that the need to go remote will remain with us for some time – this is how the network says it’ll make things work:

• Excellent discovery. LinkedIn has the ‘professional context’ to recommend the most relevant events to users, so they can network, learn and develop, and will work to show more events to users.
• Connect with professionals. LinkedIn says that when you attend an event on site, you bring your full profile with you – which allows you to connect with other attendees easier, and see who may be the best ones for you to speak to.
• Learn. LinkedIn is home to a large community of professionals who aren’t shy about sharing insights, trends and tips. Audio and Video Events will help more people connect to industry leaders.