As of January 30th, Engagio is now OPEN for signups without the proverbial “Invite Code”. Since our December 6th unveiling on Fred Wilson’s blog, we processed over 3,000 invite requests without any marketing on our part. 

And last week, we purchased the domain Engagio.com, aided by the resourceful LE at Domain Registry (LE is his pseudonym on AVC). LE is a master expert in domain management matters, and I would recommend him to anyone having domain-related initiatives. 

What’s new with the Engagio product? Most of the new features are centered on enhancing the InBox experience, and we’ve added a few niceties into the Sites folder.

The InBox Gets Richer

• Hide a comment or user for Spam or another reason. Self-explanatory. 
• A pair of chevrons next to an Inbox entry indicates that the newest reply in this conversation was destined to you.
• Next/Previous pagination allows you to go from one conversation to another without jumping back to the InBox.
• Enhanced user pop-overs which now include “Comments from this users”, you Interactions with them, and a clear link to their Profile page.
• We’re now picking-up Facebook photos and Facebook shares (in addition to Facebook Comments and Facebook posts).

Sites Management and Content from Sites

• You can mute/un-mute a specific site from your list of Top Sites. Muting a site will hide it from your Inbox, but doesn’t stop the collection of data from that site.
• Hovering over a Site’s name will reveal the latest articles that were commented on from that site. It’s great for content discovery. Next to the Inbox, this is the most visited area by users who want to discover new sites where their Contacts are commenting. It’s great for meeting your friends or targeted relationships across multiple touch points. 
  

How Engagio Changes Your Commenting Habits

We also have received new reviews in blogs, magazines and newspapers, and lots of positive feedback, and lots of spontaneous ones on Twitter. We love those and make them our Favorites. 

Among the most recent reviews of the 3 weeks, I’d like to highlight the one authored by Douglas Crets in Fast Company. I asked Douglas who runs dB C Media how has Engagio changed his user habits. He responded: 

“Simply put, Engagio has shown me how much I might miss in conversations on blogs if I depend only on the email delivery of follow-up comments. It often allows me to see much more of the bigger picture around my comments, and definitely shows me who is immediately responding to me, which is something that actually gets lost in the follow up emails, but does not necessarily alert me to which one is specifically about comment threads I have started. 

With Engagio, this problem is solved. I can see these blog comments in the same milieu as my other comments and conversations in other settings. This makes it entirely possible for me to see what threads emerge from the day’s conversations and who surfaces as a reliable partner in these conversations.” 

Doug’s key point is about the holistic nature of the conversations across the various touch points, and the “aha” that’s provided when you tie the people behind the conversations. At Engagio, we believe that comments are implicit linkages about people, and if you see the value in online communities, you will see value in the people relationships inside these communities.

Finally, we added a number of Social buttons inside the App. This allows you to share us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and GooglePlus. We need you to use these buttons on all these networks to spread the word about Engagio.