With MindSay approaching its 3^rd birthday, we thought it would be a good opportunity to share with you some details about what we’re working on and what you can expect from us in the coming weeks, months, and beyond.

We started MindSay with some pretty loosely defined goals – create a blogging site that was easy to use, had some cool community features, and allowed users to express themselves freely through words and images.  We’ve learned a ton along the way in how to (and sometimes how NOT to) build a good community, and have tried to incorporate new features into the site that tailor to the always changing needs of our audience. 

From a technology perspective, we think MindSay has become a fairly mature product.  We don’t have the resources to keep up with some of the features of our “competitors” (for example video hosting, unlimited photo uploads, etc.), but have consistently worked on improving what we do well – making it easy to stay in touch and find interesting new blogs and people – and feel good about the niche our product has carved out in the world of online community. 

With that, our new goal is to take what we’ve built and create ways to bring together people with similar interests by launching new web sites based on our software.  Specifically, we’ll be creating communities focused on specific interests, designed for both current MindSay users looking for something new and first-time bloggers looking for a site that caters to the subjects they are most passionate about.  Our first such endeavor is called 9players, aimed at baseball fans.  We thought baseball was a good choice because a) there are lots of MindSay members who already blog about baseball and b) the people who are passionate about baseball generally have a lot to say about the subject, and our blogging tools should provide a good outlet for them to express their opinions.

Does this new direction mean we are abandoning MindSay?  Absolutely not.  MindSay will continue to be the focal point of our innovation, and the breeding ground for new ideas.  In fact, we hope our members take pride in our new projects, knowing that they have played an important role in molding the software that allows us to pursue this direction.    

As always, we welcome your feedback and if you’re interested, check out 9players and let us know what you think.  We are as dedicated as ever to MindSay, and truly appreciate all of your support over the last 3 years.

*** EDIT 5/1 - if anyone has ideas for new MindSay-based sites they'd like to see, feel free to post them ...