(13 September 2007 7:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Rediff.com has added eight new Indian languages to its blogging and social networking platform, Rediff iLand. It will now support eight new languages - Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Gujarati.

Users will be able to use the normal keyboard to type in English alphabets using the QWERTY keyboard to input words in other languages easily on the basis of phonetics to create language blogs on Rediff iLand.

Rediff.com VP marketing Manish Agarwal said, "Rediff wishes to provide every Indian with a right to express his views in the language he or she is most comfortable in and participate in forming a community bonded by common point of views and opinions online. Indians reading blogs frequently are increasing at fast pace and removal of language barrier will further hasten the growth of blogging in India and on Rediff iLand."

To enable language blogging, Rediff iLand uses a specialized transliteration tool, which is based on advanced machine learning algorithms and is an improvement on simple phonetic maps and specialized language keyboards.

The Indian blogging community currently is dominated by English blogs. However, with growing awareness and increasing adoption of internet in B and C cities more and more Indians are expected to adopt blogging and explore newer opportunities by participating in this growing medium.

The initiative is expected to open up and bring in a new set of internet users and actively participate in forming a very vibrant and active community online.

According to an official release, Rediff iLand has been growing at 150 per cent per annum. It has a current base of over 5.6 million bloggers.