Rediff iLand, Rediff’s social blogging platform (I think that’s what they call it), has undergone a revamp, and they’ve added multiple languages - Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Gujarati. Rediff already has multilingual email, so this is a natural extension. Rediff claims that iLand has been growing at 150 percent per annum (but if you’re starting with a low base, then that’s not much), and has a current userbase of 5.6 million blogs.

I’ve never been a fan of iLand - in fact, had stopped reading Prem Panicker’s blog over a year ago after he switched from Blogger to iLand. At that time, one needed to sign up to post comments - which was off-putting for some of the cricket buffs that used to discuss matches live in the comments section of Panicker’s blog. (It was fun pestering Ganguly fans after he was dropped from the team). iLand also had font issues with Firefox, but all of this seems to have been sorted out now. I still prefer the old Rediffblogs - which was even more easy than Blogger. Some of the features that iLand had incorporated then (like activity on friends’ blogs) were ahead of its time, but are now easier with RSS. Question is - what is Rediff going to do with two blogging platforms - iLand and Rediffblogs. Rediff’s Blogshowcase has also gone live.