So Lotusphere is ramping up, a little more than two weeks away. I saw a flurry of tweets about people adding themselves to Lanyrd. I’ve seen Lanyrd in the past and briefly looked at it. Once again, I’ve taken a look at it, this time a closer one. Honestly, I am just not seeing the point of the site. I am fully able to admit, it may be the next big thing and a year from now I will feel stupid that I said this, but for now, I just don’t get it.
What is it supposed to do for me? I find the few things it does are done by other sites, and those other sites do it better and are already part of my day-to-day routine.
It can show me who is speaking at a conference or attending. Well, sort of. It only shows me those people who went to Lanyrd to sign up. Which is definitely not a complete listing, or even close to one. I find some of the Twitter lists, or the Lotusphere aggregator to be much more complete on capturing who will be there and what they are saying. Slideshare, Flickr, and other sites capture a lot more in addition to what’s being said and again, I’m already signed up, so are other people who are attending. Add a hashtag and BAM, I’ve got all my information. As I understand it, Lanyrd doesn’t do this.
My other issues with Lanyrd:
Anyone can add themselves as a speaker at a conference, and more importantly, anyone can REMOVE SOMEONE ELSE as a speaker.
Anyone can add sessions with any description they want, such as lewd or incorrect abstracts, or even completely made up (and possibly embarrassing to the event) sessions.
People can cheese out and add their company as a speaker. Lotusphere does a pretty good job of keeping speakers from marketing their companies during sessions, not so much on Lanyrd.
People can modify other people’s bios. If they never added themselves (remember, someone else could add them), they may not even realize it as they wouldn’t know to check.
My suggestions for Lanyrd:
Allow conference owners/moderators. Letting the conference staff themselves moderate would alleviate a lot of the above problems (like made up sessions and fake speakers and “company” speakers).
Show the conversation. Grab a Twitter hashtag and show the chatter on the conference page. Grab pictures from Flickr, etc.
What do you use Lanyrd for? Did you just sign up because other people did or do you actually get value from the site? I’m not trying to be harsh, I simply don’t get it, and would be happy to have my opinion changed. So go ahead, convince me. 