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THE CLINCHER WAS THE GUY who called from a train in Italy. It's proof that one woman looking for a few good dates can capture international attention.
Attention is just what Yahoo Personals wanted when it put a 39-year-old woman up on a billboard for three days to troll the dating site and invite a few men in - er, outdoors.
Julie, a freelance screenwriter and Yahoo Personals subscriber, lived atop the Hollywood billboard for three days. Daily life - and eight dates - were broadcast worldwide 12 hours per day via Yahoo. Fans watched to see which guy Julie would ask back on the last day. (It was Clark, an Indy racecar mechanic.) Meanwhile, celebrities, stylists, reporters and DJs visited. Friends came to help Julie leaf through profiles.
The dates were on the billboard (and on-air), catered by local restaurants. A guitarist serenaded one; a comedian performed up top for another. The Web cam kept rolling. "We had a delete button, but we never used it," says Sandra Cordova Micek, Yahoo Personals director of marketing. Yahoo did background checks on all potential dates. Most came from the site; one won a radio essay contest (Julie judged entries) and three were Yahoo Personals subscribers that Julie had already met.
The schedule was "busy but not exhausting," Micek says, with enough content to interest online viewers and enough break time for Julie.
And the schedule stayed flexible. One DJ kept chatting with Julie after their on-air interview was over; Yahoo...