Since Minekey launched in late 2007, many of you have told us that you would like a dedicated website for Minekey, outside of social networks. We’ve listened to your suggestions intently, spent long hours brainstorming and planning … and today we’re proud to let you know that we will be launching a Minekey website next week. (Register for a preview at www.minekey.com).

Given how popular the application is on social networks, we will continue to host and develop Minekey on Facebook and the other networks. In fact, you will be able to access and interact with all of the opinions, comments and other members’ activity from any of those networks and the website, at any time. Many of you will prefer to use the website, but for those of you who prefer Minekey on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, hi5 or Orkut – you can continue using the app there, as ever before.

Regardless of which instance of Minekey you are using, you will always be able to access all your content. Further, we are dedicated to preserving the integrity of the experience to which you are accustomed, and are working hard to ensure that whichever version of Minekey you are using, the experience will be the same.

The new website will address certain limitations which many of you have brought to our attention. For one, you will be able set-up your own personal URL for your Minekey profile (for instance, johnsmith.minekey.com, or sandra.minekey.com), which will then serve as a destination for your Minekey activity which can then be directly accessed by anyone. Also, we are exploring the possibility giving you the capability to attach photos and videos to comments.

Please share the word with friends and other Minekey members. We will invite people to use the service in three stages. Firstly, it will be available to those of you who sign up for the preview by entering your email address at www.minekey.com. Next, existing users of the app on social networks will be invited. And lastly, anyone will be able to join. Signing up on the website now will definitely increase your chance of getting the URL of your choice, as they will be available on a first come, first serve basis.

In line with our vision to be the leading destination for online discussions, we are very excited to announce two new features in our Facebook application which will take discussion and conversation to a totally new level!

You can now have discussions within an Opinion, so that you able to reply to specific comments and carry on a threaded discussion. Also when other users reply to your comments, you will get a notification and activity update so you will be able better track your discussions across multiple opinions.

You can also view conversations between two people who are communicating using their notes under My Activity > Notes. And if the your are viewing your own conversation, you will be able to easily write a note to the other user directly on that page. Making notes an even stronger communication channel between two users.

These features we hope will help and let users share their passion more easily on Minekey and with each other!