LinkedIn has added a great new feature to help people network!   Last week, LinkedIn added Events, a feature which lets users list events and other users to indicate whether they are going or if they are interested in going. This feature isn’t groundbreaking, but the value of having it in LinkedIn is that it is now easier to promote an event to your LinkedIn connections.

When I found out about this on Friday, I was excited. Within a couple of hours, I created a listing for the World Usability Day event I’m planning here in Ann Arbor. I thought I was exploring uncharted territory. You can imagine my surprise when I saw several listings for upcoming Pure Visibility classes. “What’s up with that?” I said.

It turns out that LinkedIn somehow sucked in our events before it went live. While it is nice to have our classes promoted, we ask our attendees to register so we can make sure there is enough seating. If someone signs up for our class on LinkedIn but not in Eventbrite and we don’t notice, then we may end up with an overcrowded classroom.

What is alarming is that these events all have a button that reads “Claim this Event.” It looks like anyone can get in and claim ownership of our events and edit the listing. Or, at least, they would be able to, except that LinkedIn seems to resist any changes that I try to make to our events.

Overall, this feature doesn’t seem fully baked. Pure Visibility’s events are dangling out there and may be editable by the world. Every few clicks, Events seems to have trouble bringing up a page and asks you to hit refresh or try again later.

When they finish it, though, this should be a great addition to LinkedIn.