Koo App: Home-Grown Social Media App: All You Need to Know
Koo, the Home-grown social media application is garnering huge public attention as top politicians and other renowned personalities are joining it. This made in India social media application started trending after the Centre’s spat with Twitter, wherein the latter refused to follow Centre’s orders to block certain content and social media accounts that were against legal guidelines of India.
In a blog post, Twitter stated that it has not blocked any account involving news media journalists, politicians, entitles, and activists as it would breach users’ elemental rights to express themselves freely.
What exactly happened? Ahead of a meeting scheduled between Twitter and the government of India, Twitter published an unusual blog post explaining why it had restored the accounts that were blocked during the farmers’ tractor rally.
Following the blogpost, the ministry of information and technology took to the made in India- Koo to question Twitter about its timing of publishing a blog which was to be discussed with the IT Secretary.
The authorities are sharing their responses about the rise of Koo. It is being heavily praised as a tough contender of the US-based social media giant Twitter.
· What is Koo?
Koo is a made in India social media app, similar to micro-streaming blog platform Twitter. It allows users to upload and download media content with audio attached to them. It lets users publish text-based content within a word limit of 400 characters. It also provides a language preference of six different Indian languages along with English. Similar to Twitter, the symbol of Koo is a fowl and it comes in yellow color. It considers users to use ‘@’ in order to mention users in images or videos. Besides, customers can also use a hashtag ‘#’ for following a trend. Apart from these, it allows customers to ‘rekoo’, which is Koo’s version of a retweet. Users can also use the chatting option as an alternative to any direct messaging platform.
· When was Koo released?
The made in India social media app KOO was founded by MayankBidwatka and AprameyaRadhakrishna. This duo has also founded ‘Voka’ and is involved with an audio-video data-sharing media of Quora.
In March 2020, the social media app was released and praised for its driving spirit of tech innovation. It was also felicitated with an authority’s award. Koo has raised more than $4 million from its latest and current buyers together with enterprise capital organizations- 3one4 Capital and Accel.
Not to deny but Twitter has served and operated as a vital public communication platform for the federal government for the last few years. However, a large number of Bollywood stars, known personalities, and ministers have joined Koo and are using the app for a few months now. Some ministers, including Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, joined Koo this month.
Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become a part of Koo, where he delivers his concerns in a month-to-month radio handle. He stated, “Koo is a homegrown social media platform where users can share their opinions and interact in their mother tongue with the help of texts, videos and audios.”
· How to download Koo?
Koo is a free social media app, which is available on both iOS as well as Android. The app helps Indians to communicate in their Mother languages on Google Play. On the App Store, it is called “Koo: connect with Top Indians” provided by Bombinate Technologies PVT LTD.
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· What do Koo’s founders have to say
The sudden surge in the popularity of Koo may come in contrast with some aspects of virtual investments in India.
As the social media platform is very similar to Twitter, it has witnessed a massive increase in the number of users. Several users are even planning to shift from Twitter to Koo. The social media app has become the talk of the town and has been indulged in several discussions.
The CEO and co-founder of Koo, Radhakrishna demonstrated Koo’s infrastructure and its workforce to Times of India.
Recently, Koo has stated that the number of downloads has increased to ten times of what it was earlier. It is also likely to experience a 20 times increase in the number of downloads in the coming days.
According to Koo’s co-founder Radhakrishna, the social media platform is going to take away most of the Indian users of Twitter in the coming months. Indian news media and entertainment media are also helping Koo to get the most media hype in order to establish it as a substitute of Twitter and garner more public attention.
