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!

Minekey users tell the story about the application better than anyone. Read the following testimonials from passionate users of the Minekey app on Facebook:

In this context we would also like to share a couple of presentations made by our CEO in early June that you may find interesting. The first is a brief story, and the second a detailed one on what users have to say about Minekey. To view the presentations in full screen mode, click the “view presentation” link beneath each, which will take you to the presentations at Slideshare.net. Once there, click on the “Full” link on bottom right corner of the presentations.

As announced on July 25, we have changed the name of iThink to Minekey.

Facebook users can check out the new face of the application by clicking here — and once there, don’t forget to click the applications link on your Facebook profile and bookmark Minekey.

Please note that we are only changing the name of the application. The user experience – the features, functions and design – will not be affected in any way. We will continue to use the same Favicon and Application images that you are familiar with, so finding Minekey (iThink) on your Facebook profile or in the App Directory should be easy. Once the change is made, any links or bookmarks that you have to iThink on Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Friendster, Orkut on your Profile will automatically be replaced by Minekey links and bookmarks. Your profile box, feeds, emails and notifications will continue to work as they have in the past, except that they will be named or received from Minekey rather than iThink – and you will always able to reach Minekey through these channels. Also, when you search the App Directories for Minekey you will be able to find it there as well.

I am confident that you’ll continue to enjoy the iThink experience under Minekey name. Happy Minekeying!

Since we launched the iThink application on Facebook 8 months ago to empower users share their opinions, over 1.5 Million people have installed iThink and have rated it as highly addictive and among the best apps on Facebook. However, due to a trademark dispute we have decided to drop the iThink name and promote the opinion community under Minekey name.

We’ll soon be revamping the Minekey website to feature the opinion community service, in addition to the recommendations widget service. Therefore, we will be moving the recommendations widget service to a sub-domain on the Minekey website . Please make a note of this change and book mark this URL for future reference. This is just a change of the URL address, and will not have any impact upon the service itself. You will continue to be able to access all the features and functionality that you now have at this new URL.

Thank you very much for being a loyal user of the Minekey Recommendations service. In case if you haven’t yet tried Minekey’s opinion sharing service – please do so at your earliest convenience on any of the following social networks:

Facebook
MySpace
Hi5
Friendster
Orkut

Hope you’ll enjoy the world class experience of Minekey’s opinions community. Happy Minekeying.