LinkedIn is launching LinkedIn Events. The feature will be available to all members of the platform over the next few days, starting with English-speaking markets. The feature aims to help grow active, professional communities by building authentic, face-to-face relationships.

Face to face meetings are a very necessary part of professional networking, as “in-person interactions” help create deeper relationships. In fact, LinkedIn even says that people are 2x more likely to accept connection requests after meeting face to face.

“I think there is a massive whitespace for events today,” says Ajay Datta, head of product for LinkedIn India. “People don’t have a single place to organize [work-related] offline meetups specific to an industry or a neighborhood. People want to find other people.”

The functionality is similar to Facebook events, making it easy to organize meet-ups. And given the professional nature of LinkedIn, the option will no doubt come in handy – in fact, it’s kind of surprising LinkedIn hasn’t launched it until now.

“You can begin by visiting the ‘Community’ panel located on the left side of the newsfeed and click +Create. Next, you would need to provide a description, a date and time, a venue, and then invite your connections using filters such as location, company, industry, and school.”

“From your event page, you can easily track attendees and invitees, post updates and interact with other attendees. LinkedIn’s algorithm automatically provides timely and relevant notifications to attendees to make sure they don’t miss any important updates about your event. Members who have joined the event can also invite people from their own networks to attend.”

The option serves a clear, functional purpose in LinkedIn’s system, and will no doubt be a popular addition, chances are that there are quite a few events that would help users make the most of the kind of work that they are attempting to get involved in at this point in time.