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.

As iThink users on Facebook have already noticed, we’ve been closely listening to user feedback and working hard behind the scenes to bring you the newest version of iThink! We hope you like the changes and would love to hear what you think.

Here are just some of the improvements we made:
- We made it easier to browse categories by bringing category navigation to the right side in the form of a tag cloud. The relative size of the category also represents the popularity of that category.
- New notification area on top of the application where we be highlighting interesting opinions and topics.
- New iThink logo!

Stay tuned for even more over the next few weeks because we are going continue to improve the iThink experience on Facebook. Read the announcement here on Facebook.

iThink will be center stage on November 13, at an event called “How to Monetize Applications on Social Networking Platforms”.

Members of the Minekey Team will be presenting iThink to an audience of entrepreneurs, technologists and investors at the PlugandPlay Tech Center in Sunnyvale.

Other developers of social applications will also be presenting — as will be Ramu Yalamanchi, CEO of Hi5.

Please join us — it’s Free!

To Register, CLICK HERE.

For Directions, CLICK HERE.

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.

Minekey Lunch 2.0 was an tremendous success. The 263 guests chowed down to BBQ food on the Plug and Play Tech Center Patio. Everyone seemed to enjoy the DJ’ed music, informal networking and presentation by CEO Delip Andra of Minekey’s Recommendations Widget. Guests included engineering, marketing, operations and investment folk from all corners of the Valley. Thanks to Terry, David, Joseph, Mark and Jeremiah of Lunch 2.0 for helping organize the event.

For more photos, see the Lunch 2.0 portfolio on Flickr.