Social conference directory Lanyrd goes Pro for businesses, launching with Facebook, GitHub and more

Lanyrd, the conference-focused social directory service, is today announcing the launch of Lanyrd Pro, a paid-for offering aimed at helping companies make more from the conferences they get involved in as sponsors or speakers.

The focal point of Lanyrd Pro is the ability for companies to set up branded conference portal pages, highlighting where employees are speaking, events being sponsored by the company, and providing a central place for slides and videos from presentations to be accessed by the public.

In addition to the promotional benefits the product affords, Lanyrd Pro also allows companies to keep track of their involvement in events around the world. They can access reports to see which team members speak at specific types of events as well as an overview of the events they’ve sponsored.

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For large businesses with a multi-national presence, this could well be an appealing prospect. Indeed, Lanyrd Pro is launching with the likes of Facebook, GitHub, Y Combinator, Heroku and Mashery on board – all companies that attend and sponsor lots of events around the world.

With pricing starting at $99 per month (with a 10% discount for an annual payment), UK-based Y Combinator graduate Lanyrd is aiming the Pro offering at companies of all sizes, with the cost adjusted depending on the number of employees.

This is the first source of recurring revenue for Lanyrd, which launched in January 2011 and has until now focused on building its product out with the likes of a browser plugin for Twitter and LinkedIn integration off the back of a total of $1.4 million in funding to date. “We’ve done one-off deals and custom work in the past (to generate revenue, but) you could certainly see this as the unveiling of the first part of our business model,” says co-founder and CEO, Simon Willison.

➤ Lanyrd Pro