Jan 10 — The Wyndham hotel is sold out of hotel rooms for the internet dating convention on Feb 2-3. The second official hotel is the Sovereign Hotel at a rate of $139 per night (plus 13% tax). They are 5 blocks (1 minute drive or 10 minute walk) from the Wyndham. You can contact the hotel at: Sovereign Hotel, 4833 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach FL 33140, 305-531-3232. Mention "Internet Dating Conference Group Rate" of $139.
Mark Brooks: The focus of this years conference is on improving retention, conversion and new products for online personals companies. I’ll be presenting the news highlights for the year, as the keynote. Dr John Gray (Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus) will be speaking about educating and retaining users. Check out this years top notch line up of speakers
I think the biggest news is that Yahoo Personals is now going to be run by Susan Mernit.
What is she going to do with all that web 2.0 stuff? The ceo said in the citygroup conference that the future of AOL was social networking and free sites. He said yahoo music was their model for the company, a free service fallowed by a paying service for more features. With yahoo personals convert to a free service? Will yahoo permiere become the pay service? At any rate the flickrization of yahoo continues….
Susan is a new Senior Product Manager. Anna Zornosa is still running the show. Here’s a link to Susan’s blog…
http://susanmernit.blogspot.com/2006/01/newsflash-im-joining-yahoo.html
Mark Brooks
Editor
Online Personals Watch
212-444-1636
mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com
There are still rooms available at the Wyndham, because I booked one last night. Perhaps the rooms at the discounted convention rate are all sold, but you can still get a room.