On January 18th, LinkShare will be holding its annual Partnership Summit in San Francisco, California. Michael Schrage of MIT's Media Labs will be the keynote speaker at this year's event. For more information about the event, and to register, visit the Partnership Summit website.

In this update of their affiliate reporting tool, LinkShare has released new reports that display trend analyses of performance and payments.  The company has also created a centralized area to display the most important statistics including EPC, and has published a set of web-based training modules for users to familiarize themselves with the changes.

In an effort to restore credibility to their Premier Partner Program, Chris at Affiliate Marketing Blog reports that LinkShare has updated the program's requirements. Among the new requirements are that 100% of all transaction inquiries must be resolved within ten days and that a premier merchant must use LinkShare's affiliate payment service. Whether or not these requirements will be enforced remains to be seen. Read Chris' full commentary here.