With the pandemic still disrupting live events, and forcing businesses and industry groups to seek alternative means of networking and community connection, LinkedIn has seen a big rise in live events hosted on its platform, with the creation Live Events within the app increasing by 150%, year-over-year.

Which makes sense – LinkedIn is, of course the professional social network and where business leaders are increasingly looking to make professional connections. And now, as it looks to maximize its potential on this front, LinkedIn is adding some new elements to its live events tools, which will provide more capacity for connection and interaction in the LinkedIn environment.

First off, LinkedIn is rolling out an initial test of its own, Clubhouse-like audio events platform, which will allow users to tune into live discussions in the app, and participate by raising their virtual hand to join as a speaker, or posting likes in response to the chat.

The format looks very much like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, with separate panels for those 'on stage' and speaking, and those tuning in below.

LinkedIn has been building its live audio tools since March last year at the height of the hype cycle around Clubhouse, while it's taken some time for this platform to develop its own option. Still, it might fill an important niche within the LinkedIn environment, allowing for more professional connections to take place within industry-aligned meetings and discussions.

LinkedIn says further that it also has robust capacity to show each member the most relevant audio sessions:

"We have the professional context to recommend the most relevant events that can help you learn, network and be successful, and we're investing more in surfacing these events to you. Whether an event by a creator or page you follow, or a topic you're passionate about, we will surface the events that will help you reach your career goals."

The biggest remaining challenge with social audio tools continues to be discovery, and since LinkedIn is a professional-focused platform, which should naturally help it limit the spam and the less relevant discussion kinds, it may be well-poised to highlight the more relevant sessions to each user.
That will further expand the capacity of the platform to host virtual discussions, bringing industry leaders together in new formats that might, again, be hugely valuable within a LinkedIn context and help expand the usage of the platform for live events.
Of course, optimally, we will all get back to the IRL events sooner rather than later. But with the Omicron variant of COVID now pushing case numbers higher once again, it looks like we will indeed be living with the virus for some time yet.

And even when live events can take place, these new connection options on LinkedIn will be beneficial, especially as more businesses transition to hybrid working processes, where more people spend more time in locations other than at a given physical office space. The fact that employees are increasingly moving out of main cities may also limit the potential to assemble business leaders in the same location for such forums but virtual meeting tools like this may ensure that such meetings can still take place regardless of where participants are based.

The developments could serve a valuable purpose – LinkedIn says that its new events options will be tested by “a few thousand creators who will host events across different topics and themes”

“We’ll expand the ability to host Audio Events to more creators in the coming months, and we’ll start rolling out our Video Events format later this spring.”

Definitely one to keep tabs on – we’ll keep you updated on any progress.