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Volunia: an integrated search engine and social network

Volunia may be trending few days or months from now. For those who didn't know Volunia, it's a new search engine. Like Google and Yahoo, it has the same capability to search anything in the internet. But what's really interesting and unique about Volunia is its ability to function as a social network. It's an integrated search engine and social network.

We know Google as the "Search Engine Giant" and we know Facebook as the "Social Network Giant". If 70 percent of the internet users will use Volunia, would it mean the end of Google and Facebook? Let us know some important details what made Volunia more special than Google and Facebook.
Considered to be more innovative than any other search engines, it allows you to view particular components or media in a website more easily and at the same time connecting or communicating with other registered Volunia users who view the same website or web page. In short words, I described it as a "social search engine".

Volunia
Volunia homepage

Who is the founder of Volunia?


It's founded by Massimo Marchiori, an Italian computer scientist. In July 2004, Technology Review awarded him the TR100 prize (the best 100 researchers in the world). He created "HyperSearch", a search engine where the results are not based on single pages but also the relevance and links of single pages to other web pages in the internet. It contributed to the development of Google's search engine algorithm.

Marchiori hired software developers to help him create Volunia. Many of them are his former students in the university.

As the Future Search Engine

Marchiori described Volunia as the "future search engine". Although Google played as the dominant player in search engines, Marchiori ambitiously said, "If I didn’t think it was something big, capable of competing with the giants of online search, I would never have got involved".

Volunia Special Features

Let's go to the details in using Volunia. Like other search engines, you search a word or keywords and instant results are shown. What's really interesting about it are the innovative features integrated in the search results of Volunia such as:
  • Number of people who visited and who are currently online on the website is indicated. The two are represented by icons located beside every search results.
  • Visual map
  • Grid map
For example, if you search "Facebook" in Volunia, search results of web pages about Facebook are shown. You will know how many people visited a particular web page and how many people are currently online. Number of people who visited and number of people who are currently online on a certain web page are indicated at the left side of each search results of the term "Facebook".

Aside from that, you can also see a visual map of the website if you click the visual map icon found also at the left side of each search results in Volunia. Visual map looks like a virtual village in which the Homepage is the towncenter and other menus of a website are represented by houses or buildings. Beside the visual map icon is the grid map icon. If you click the grid map icon, you will then be shown a grid of the menus and links of a website. They look like folders and files arranged in grid.

There are more interesting and innovative features of Volunia that are not yet revealed. They won't tell all due to competition. As what Marchiori said in an interview, "I can’t say any more, I’m really sorry … The fact is that an enterprise like Google, to give an example, would have no difficulty in setting 100 engineers to work day and night on our idea and in coming out before us".

The Future of Google and Facebook

Volunia will implement profit-generating venues through advertising. If 70% of internet users will use Volunia, much of the Google and Facebook usage time will decrease. We know time is money. That would mean a decrease of advertising revenue of the two internet companies.

But the question is, will Volunia become successful? Only time can tell. But who knows Volunia will become the next big thing in the internet?



Today, I'm checking the volunia website (volunia.com). And they're inviting for users (Power Users) to test Volunia. To apply as a Power user, I send my email address to them and I hope I would got the chance to be one of the Power Users of Volunia.

Their official launch date was on February 6, 2012. If I'll be accepted as a power user of Volunia, I'll update this post to tell you more details about Volunia.
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"Volunia: an integrated search engine and social network" was written by Mary under the Internet category. It has been read 2935 times and generated 0 comments. The article was created on and updated on 07 February 2012.
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