I just read this and the post-mortem. Whether by luck, or more likely experience, Lanyrd ventured into the event space quite differently from EventVue and all

I just read this and the post-mortem. Whether by luck, or more likely experience, Lanyrd ventured into the event space quite differently from EventVue and all of the companies listed in the article. The emphasis on crowdsourcing to build up the database is, as far as I can tell, unique. Most of the companies listed in the article want to build a private, ring fenced social network for each client & all the tools. This only really works if you already have an existing network, with incentives other than just the conference. For example the telecoms world has the TMForum, and their site is a private social network. Works for them. O'Reilly have their own tool too, as a big conference host, with lots of events and followers (&authors). The value in lanyrd, to date, is not trying to enter that space. Personally I'm finding interesting content from events I would have loved to go to, but did not, mainly because a) I didn't know they existed or b) my interests were not in that space at the time of the conference! There are literally dozens of interesting use-cases which could or could not be monetized. There are some great ideas in that article for Lanyrd to look into in terms of revenue generation though, especially with respect to tracking user referals/sign up flow.