Pat Budin is yesterday’s lucky winner of the Minekey “Friends Invite” Contest, and gets a new iPod Nano as the prize!

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Invite 100 or more friends to Minekey, and become eligible to win the daily contest. Check back here on the blog for daily announcements of winners.

For contest details, click here.

Minekey Extends its Discussion Community on Leading Social Networks to its Website to Reach Broader Audience

SUNNYVALE, CA – Sep 8, 2008 – Minekey, the Leading Discussion Community on Facebook, today launched its destination website to extend its reach to a broader audience. Minekey’s discussion network now spans across its own website and the five leading social networks – Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5 and Orkut.

To date, over 1.8 million users have participated in discussions on the Minekey network and have expressed over one million opinions, cast 40 million votes and written over seven million comments. Minekey is rated as the most addictive application on Facebook by many users and is among the top 100 social applications in activity and engagement. Minekey ranks among the top five applications in Politics, top 10 in Chat and top three applications with a high percentage of women users.

“Social networks are not very effective at connecting people outside their immediate social circles”, says Delip Andra Minekey’s Founder & CEO. “Minekey expands the social universe by helping users connect with people from all over the world through conversations”.

One great example of how Minekey makes this kind of social connection possible is the story of Samantha Sten, an ardent user from Sweden, and Antonis Konstantoudakis, another passionate user from Greece, who met on Minekey, and will soon get married. Antonis says “Minekey encourages discussion about a wide variety of subjects, while remaining surprisingly fun. Minekey makes the whole world closer, and much smaller. The experience has changed my life.” Says Samantha, “I’ve made more friends and intellectual companions in a few weeks of using Minekey than I had all the time I used Facebook without it. On Minekey, I met the love of my life, and so have many others.”

About Minekey, Inc

Minekey is the leading discussion network that connects real people through real conversations. People from all over the world hang out on Minekey and discuss stuff that matters to them such as relationships, social and political issues, religion, pop culture and more. Minekey’s proprietary technology provides recommendations on relevant topics, conversations and people with similar interests. Founded by Delip Andra in 2005 and funded by NEA IndoUS Ventures, Minekey is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has R&D offices at Delhi and IIT Kharagpur in India. For more information visit: www.minekey.com.

Vote on opinions, invite your friends, and win an iPod!

Everyday for 7 days — beginning September 29 — we will give away an iPod on Minekey.com. To win, invite 100 friends and vote on opinions.

Everyday, an iPod will be awarded randomly to one of you who invites over 100 friends on that day.

Click here now to share Minekey with your friends and family and enter to win one of 7 iPods. For rules and guidelines, click here. Good luck!

Note that to be eligible, your Minekey profile must feature a photo of you!