Dear Mixxers,

One of the things we’ve always liked about you—yes, you!—is just how engaged and involved you are, within the Mixx community and society at large.

The TweetMixx Channel, Aid for Haiti, is a fantastic example, and has been incredibly popular as the place to get the latest news and information on recovery and reconstruction efforts after the recent earthquake in Haiti. A lot of Mixxers have even used the Aid for Haiti Channel to make donations directly to the Red Cross.

And now we’re proud to announce that the Demi & Ashton Foundation has launched a TweetMixx Channel where you can find out more about Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s campaign to eradicate child sex slavery throughout the world, see what the change makers are saying, and discover ways to help.

We hope you’ll go check out both of these important Channels, and as always, let us know what you think.

And in case we haven’t said it enough lately, we love having you in the Mixx!

The Mixx Team

Like everyone around the world, our thoughts have been with the people of Haiti as they try to recover from this unimaginably tragic situation. While we have personally donated to the relief efforts, we also wanted to do something more than sit idly by, or merely ask for donations. This weekend, Mixx was invited to “Crisis Camp” in Washington, DC where a bunch of geeks got together and gave their time and energy to help in any way they could. People worked on interactive digital maps of Haiti for smartphones that would help relief groups while others developed a Craigslist style site enabling groups to exchange supplies and other assistance in Haiti.

We were awed by this outpouring and began our own project. Today we are publishing TweetMixx For Haiti. This is a channel that pulls together the latest and most relevant information, including content with headline summaries, hosted photos and videos all into one place. The channel comes with a fully skinned widget that can easily be picked up and added to any web site or blog.

There are three tabs on the channel:

• Insiders: These are the most relevant Government and Non-Government twitter accounts. Organizations include the Marine Corps and the Red Cross as well as Haiti outreach groups.
• Chatter: This is simply the latest activity about the crisis in Haiti on Twitter.
• Links: We are following the shortened URLs out to the content, determining if that content is relevant and bringing you the links and summaries back to the page.  If we have the legal right to give you the content in full on the page (YouTube embedded photos, twitpics, etc), then the content is available right there.

To help spread this information-sharing and update site, we’re doing a promotion to help get the word out. You can help! Just click the “Get the Widget” button and place it on your blog. For every widget placed on a site Mixx (and our Founder) will make a donation.  For every widget picked up and placed on a site, Mixx will donate $5 to the Red Cross Haiti Relief efforts*. Our founder will match that donation dollar for dollar so each widget generates $10 in donations! All you have to do is send a screenshot or a link to the widget on your site to feedback@mixx.com.

*Due to the constraints of being a small start-up, donations and matching will be capped at $5k.

You may have noticed a little down time on Mixx this morning.  Well, that’s because we have pushed through some small tweaks on Mixx and TweetMixx.

First, on TweetMixx, you will notice a new home page and channel directory, highlighting our great partners who have signed up for TweetMixx channels.  Second, you are now able to follow a channel on twitter–getting the channel updates pushed to wherever you get your tweets.

Over on the Mixx side, two updates as well.  Since we started Mixx we have always handled our tags in a “normalized” way. Meaning if you tagged something “Barack Obama” we have converted it to “barackobama.” Moving forward (and retroactively as we fix our millions of tags) our tags will not be normalized. This will enable easier usability and readability throughout the site.  Second, we have made a small addition to our terms of use.

As always, we’re open to feedback on our new updates!

~The Mixx Team

Those of you who don’t know what it means to send the biscuit coast-to-coast, put it in the five-hole, smack it through the wickets or why you’d need to pick up your chicklets can just skip this one. Of course you could also get off your . . . lacrosse balls and go learn about a real sport: That’s right—we’re talking hockey, baby!

We are super excited to announce that the National Hockey League just added a TweetMixx Channel so hockey fans can now get all of the best NHL and team content in one place—no more skating around the Twitterverse to find it.

Just go to NHL.com fans section and click on the NHL TweetMixx Channel. In addition to the latest news you’ll find:

• A “Chatter” tab that keeps track of what NHL fans are talking about
• A “Links” tab with the most up-to-date links that match your list of search terms
• Unwrapped, abbreviated links with text, video and photos, so you don’t have to navigate away from the NHL Tweetmixx channel
• A widget that makes it easy to share the NHL TweetMixx Channel with other websites, your Facebook page (coming soon), MySpace page, blogs and more!  You can pick up the widget right off the NHL TweetMixx channel.  Its a must-have for any hockey blog.

Real hockey fans want to know what’s going on now (Ovechkin’s knee? Anyone? Anyone?), and the new NHL TweetMixx is the place to get the latest news.

Check it out now, and, as always, let us know what you think. Unless you’re pretty sure that hockey is a sport only played in Russia and Canada and can’t resist telling us so. We’d rather spare you the embarrassment and have you just not mention it.

Kidding! We love you, hockey fans or not and we’re always ready to listen to your thoughts and suggestions.

Now get the puck over there and check it out!

Love,

The Mixx Team

In this case, those who waited for us to take the next step in the evolution of the Mixx comment system.

First, we gave you comments.

Then, we gave you nested comments.

Now, we give you multi-level comments! Woo hoo! While doing some research with our Mixxers, we heard one request loud and clear: given the active level of commenting our Mixxers do, you all felt that we needed to do a better job of tracking who said what to whom! So, after much analysis, debate, design, measurement, and quite a few beers, today we launch multi-level comments.

As always, we’d love your feedback on how we’ve done.

In addition to this, because we’re never just happy giving you one improvement, for those of you who are both Mixx and TweetMixx users, you will notice something different about TweetMixx this morning. With this upgrade, TweetMixx is now displaying photo and video thumbnails when the associated tweets have them.

Enjoy!

~The Mixx Team