Dear alpha testers and initial users, I am very excited to announce that we are finally launching the Profy alpha today and showing it to a number of major bloggers. I have already sent our press release to a number of publications and will publish it here when the embargo is lifted at noon (EST) today, January 9.

You will see some major updates, lots of new features added and a ton of bugs fixed. The most significant changes are in the 'My Network' section. The most important thing is that we have added a private messaging system so that any user can talk directly to any other user of Profy. You can also view a user's Online/Offline status throughtout the platform. We have also implemented important changes in how the blog search works - for example, you can now subscribe to the blog right from within the search results. For the RSS feeds you are subscribed to you will be able to see the lists of subscribers - provided that it is allowed by the privacy settings of other users.

And certainly we have had lots of bugs fixed and it finally permits us to start inviting more people in. But anyway, I would like everyone to remember this is an alpha release and we have lots of things to do ahead. And I invite all of you to let us know what things you need to work otherwise, what features you think should be added and which way we should steer the development in the future. Your feedback is extremely important to us and our team needs all your opinions and suggestions to eventually make the Profy platform the product any blogger would be absolutely happy with.

And wish us all luck, we are going to face publicity finally! This is a very important day for us and I would like to thank our team of initial testers for being with us and for helping us get where we are today. I do appreciate everything you do for Profy and I hope you will stay with us throughout the alpha-beta-out of beta stages as you are the best team of testers any startup could dream of having!