The LinkedIn Virtual Events tool was launched in tandem with a new Polls feature on the professional networking platform and represents a tighter integration between the existing LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events products.

Despite now being owned by Microsoft, the new product is different from Teams or Skype, owner Microsoft’s two other big video products.

LinkedIn Virtual Events taps into the huge videoconferencing trend. It is a merger of two products that LinkedIn launched last year, the live video broadcasting tool LinkedIn Live, and an offline, in-person networking product, LinkedIn Events. The launch is more than just a simple integration, however, and LinkedIn is working with third-party specialist broadcasters, including Restream, Wirecast, Streamyard and Socialive.

The new virtual tool allows users to generate a native landing page on LinkedIn, with a unique URL to promote their event. They are then able to stream the event using LinkedIn Live. All events are listed on a user’s LinkedIn page.

Users can stream up to four separate broadcasts into one LinkedIn Event for multi-session activations.

“As the business world moves towards virtual events, we recognise how important it is to equip our customers with tools to bring the professional community together — online, in real-time and at scale in the safest way possible,” said Ajay Datta, Head of Product in India at LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is already claiming that Live now has 23X more comments per post and 6X more reactions per post than simple native video.