'Worldfloat' Indian social networking site introduces news, image search engine

Worldfloat.com founder Pushkar Mahatta said the new feature would help the company widen its userbase. He said the new feature on India's homegrown social networking site would work like the search engines of global players like Google and Yahoo.

"The new search engine is one of its kind in India. No other site has the facility of social networking as well as search engine which sources news from all over the world on a real-time basis by automatic algorithms," Mahatta said.

Worldfloat.com, which was launched in June 2012, claims to have nearly 30 million users in 62 countries across the world. A substantial number of them are in India.

Mahatta said with the introduction of new features, Worldfloat has become unique in many ways as even the global players like Facebook don't have search engine facilities.

"Right now social networking and search engine are separate media. We want Worldfloat to be a bridge between social networking and searching the world," Mahatta told IANS.

Worldfloat would soon introduce "sharing" feature in the search engine by which users will be able to share news and information with other users and connect with people of common interest, Mahatta said.

"People interested in technology can meet with the other people interested in technology; similarly doctors can meet doctors, architects can meet architects from various cities of the world," he said.

Mahatta said the company's long-term plan is to create not just a search engine but a "social search engine" which will help connect people from all over the world with common interest.

"While Facebook is stuck with its graph search within its friend circle, Worldfloat is taking a far wider approach to connect people from all over the world with common interest," he said.

Along with the news search, Worldfloat has also developed image search facilities.

"It works like Google images, but it has several additional features like it sources photographs of news from all over the world in sequence of time," he said.