FLYERTALK.COM REACHES 1,000,000 POST MILESTONE

At 9:04 a.m. MT on June 6th, FlyerTalk.com, the worlds most popular online frequent flyer bulletin board, logged its 1,000,000th post. Introduced in May of 1998 by Randy Petersen, publisher of Inside Flyer magazine and WebFlyer.com, FlyerTalk averages over 425,000 visitors each month and has witnessed exponential growth during its four-year lifetime. After achieving 500,000 posts in its first three years of existence, FlyerTalk has seen that number double in the past year.

Ralf Schumann of Munich, Germany made the 1-millionth post in the Delta SkyMiles forum. Though Mr. Schumanns post marked an extraordinary milestone, it was quite typical as well -- shedding light on an American Express Membership Rewards bonus offer that could prove beneficial to other members -- and it exemplifies the characteristics that have driven FlyerTalks success; knowledge and cooperation.

"I am proud of the fact that FlyerTalk has become the place to meet online and discuss the topics of frequent flyer programs and travel," says Petersen. "But the credit for the phenomenal success of FlyerTalk goes to the members of the community and their readiness to share and help one another. It has become a model community of deep connections. FlyerTalk is a real-world community of people sharing their thoughts and opinions on the topic of convenience -- unified around the themes of frequent flyer programs and travel. Along the way, FlyerTalk has become a bit addictive as represented by members "talk time." In May, some 445,835 people visited FlyerTalk and accounted for 7,788,734 minutes of 'talk time. This represents that members visited for an average of almost 18 minutes each time they logged onto FlyerTalk -- as opposed to 18 minutes a month."

As part of its continual growth, FlyerTalk is announcing an exclusive joint venture offering FlyerTalk to the members of the highly popular Smarter Living (www.smarterliving.com) Internet Web site. "We're excited about this opportunity to work with Randy Petersen, the acknowledged leading expert on airline frequent flyer programs. We look forward to the interaction between our readers and the miles mavens of FlyerTalk" says Dan Saul, CEO of SmarterLiving.com. Ed Passarella, Editor-in-Chief of SmarterLiving.com is directing this launch of a co-branded FlyerTalk in which members of Smarter Living will have immediate access to the one million posts of FlyerTalk for their own use and contributions.

Recently Rupert Duchesne, President of the Air Canada Aeroplan frequent flyer program said, "We find FlyerTalk a real help in terms of leading edge thinking." Many travel programs around the world use FlyerTalk as a real-time study group and some have even assigned dedicated personnel to monitor and assist their members with enhanced customer service of FlyerTalk.

Originally launched as an online discussion forum dedicated to members of frequent flyer programs, FlyerTalk was redesigned in June of 2001 to include forums devoted to the topics of General Travel, Dining On the Road and Airports. And members of FlyerTalk dont limit themselves to online meetings and discussions. Last week, approximately 80 FlyerTalkers from all over the US and Europe gathered in Chicago to share travel tips, make new friends and, in some cases, meet for the first time people with whom theyve been chatting for years online. Nearly every week of the year will find an in-person FlyerTalk get-together being held in some part of the world.

Currently, more than 2,000 posts are added to FlyerTalk each average day. At its current rate of growth, FlyerTalk should achieve its 2-millionth post in about 12-15 months.

FlyerTalk.com is a product of Frequent Flyer Services and is included in the award-winning WebFlyer Network of sites (Recently named as a Gold Medal winner for travel Web site from Yahoo! Internet Life magazine). Frequent Flyer Services conceives, develops and markets products and services with the frequent flyer in mind, including InsideFlyer magazine and The Official Frequent Flyer Guidebook, and is the largest publisher of frequent flyer information in the world.