FlyerTalk.com reinforced its position as the world’s most popular frequent flyer community recently as it logged its 5,000,000th user post.

Introduced in May of 1998 for readers of this magazine, FlyerTalk has witnessed exponential growth during its seven-year lifetime. After achieving 1,000,000 posts in its first four years of existence, FlyerTalk has seen that number quintuple in the past three and a half years. And approximately 40,000 of FlyerTalk’s 91,000+ registered members have joined within the past year.

According to big-boards.com, a site that tracks statistics for most of the world’s largest bulletin board Web sites, FlyerTalk is the largest travel-related online community as measured by total post count and posts per member. And alexa.com ranks FlyerTalk in the top 5,000 most visited sites on the Internet.

Currently, more than 6,000 posts are added to FlyerTalk on average each day and between 30-80,000 unique frequent flyers visit daily. At its current rate of growth, FlyerTalk will surpass more than 7 million posts by the end of 2006.

FlyerTalk.com seems to be unique in more than the shear size of its community and number of posts. The Web site has attracted “official lurkers” and customer service agents from a number of programs, most recently Southwest Rapid Rewards and Air France Flying Blue.

Recently Continental OnePass hosted a FlyerTalk “Do” for their elite members in Houston in which nearly 350 members enjoyed personal tours and face time with all marketing executives as well as the CEO of Continental Airlines himself, Larry Kelner.

The shear velocity of FlyerTalk as a buzz worthy home of the topic of miles and points has resulted in several changes and alterations of current frequent flyer programs.