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.

Check out iThink on Hi5, the latest social network to host iThink.

Hi5 has 80 million users worldwide, and although big in America, Hi5 is the most popular social network in over 10 countries in Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Click here to add iThink to your Hi5 profile, and join one of the many conversations with friends and others from across the globe.

There are also thriving iThink communities on Facebook, MySpace and Friendster. Click the following links to add iThink to your Facebook, MySpace or Friendster profiles:
iThink on Facebook
iThink on MySpace
iThink on Friendster

We’ve just launched iThink on Facebook, a social App with which you can express and share your opinions with friends about anything — politics, dating, sports, entertainment, food and more.

See who agrees or disagrees with you, and comments on others’ opinions.

The App also lets you see which of your friends are most similar to you — based upon opinions that you share in common with them, or not.

Click here to start using iThink now.

We’re excited about the new set of features added to the Minekey website today, which we’re sure will increase the value of our widget to bloggers, publishers and end users.

New features include:

• Widget Gallery. The Gallery makes it easy for you to syndicate personalized widgets. By creating widgets for the Gallery that display content from your blog, you can secure exposure to a much wider audience.

• OPML Support. In just a few simple steps, you can now display relevant content from your favorite sources in Minekey widgets. By uploading your OPML files, you can quickly create widgets that display content from your blogroll.

• Network. Profile your blog and browsing interests, and showcase your widgets.

• My Reports. We’ve improved the charts significantly and now make available statistics, including the capability for you to track how many of your widgets are being used by other bloggers.

It has been 5 weeks since we launched the beta of the Minekey recommendations service.

Over 500 bloggers have actively participated in our beta program so far and we have clocked an aggregate CTR (Click Through Rate) of 6.35%.

Apart from a small launch event back at IIT Kharagpur, we have kept a low profile to make sure we fine tune the service based on the feedback from the Beta customers. Before we start getting the word out, we want to ensure we resolve all the critical issues and be confident that our service and infrastructure can scale. Interestingly, some of the bloggers have already discovered us and have posted reviews on their blogs. Here are some of them:

http://www.killerstartups.com/WebAppTools/Minekey–Content-Recommendation-Widget-1/

http://startupsquad.com/2007/05/21/minekey-more-details/

http://startupsquad.com/2007/05/18/minekey-tries-contextual-recommendations/#comments

http://www.widgetslab.com/index.php/2007/05/17/minekeycom-recommendations-widget/

Also, we have received some very interesting feedback from the bloggers who have tried our product and the bloggers who would like to try our product but saw some limitations. We are working hard to address several of these issues in the next release that we are putting out in the next few days. Of course, we’ll continue to make more improvements in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.