What does Koo stand for?
Uniting the World
Koo is all about uniting the world despite the language barriers. The dream of one world. Globally connected citizens of humanity. The world is divided by borders and languages. There’s little that can be done about the borders. But we certainly can break the language barriers. That’s what Koo’s mission is.
Our aim is to build the most inclusive social platform in the world, where our differences are understood and celebrated — not targeted.
How will Koo achieve this?
Koo does various things to make this mission come to life:
- Enables users to select a language of their choice when they enter the app
- Shows all the app instructions in that language
- Shows users an unending list of creators in that language in its “people” tab
- Give creators the ability to create in their native language through language enabled keyboards
- Give creators the power to post the same message in multiple global languages on one screen with our Multi-Lingual Kooing feature (patent pending product flow)
- Shows users the post in all the languages
- Enables users to translate any message using the translation functionality
This opens the world to communicate and connect with each other like never before. Here’s a video of what that looks like.
Koo’s views on social media
Social media has two words. Social and media. And social comes before media. We have all seen one-sided media before social media came into our lives. The one-sided media would share news with us and we would consume it in a newspaper, channel or a website. But we couldn’t respond, share our views or discuss it online with others. Then came social media. And changed the way people consumed information and interacted. These became networks of high trust because people were getting news, information, and knowledge from people they knew, followed, and trusted.
We believe that social media is all about the people. Irrespective of the ownership structure. Social media belongs to the people. True people power should be reflected on a social platform. Social media can’t be about the company itself or the owner or any other third party, other than the people themselves. Even though social media companies of our age are owned by owner driven organizations, they must act the way a public service should. They need to be answerable and serve the people at large. They need to be neutral, transparent, and fair. Everything they do should be known to people — be it the algorithms, or rules for verification, or content moderation reasons. Any company that serves society at large owes this to society.
How are decisions made?
All decisions at Koo are made with one simple criteria: Do what’s best for the user. If something is not good for the users, it’s not executed. We believe that nothing is bigger than people power. And that’s who Koo values the most.
You will notice that many celebrities are excited about getting verified on a platform and getting a tick mark of various colours without realizing that the true reason to do it is to help users. Without granting the tick, the users will land up following the wrong celebrity / eminent personality. Which is the main reason why even Koo grants a yellow tick to eminent personalities. Because it’s good for the user.
Koo will be used across the globe soon and as part of being a responsible global citizen, it’s important to respect the local cultures and blend in by following cultural nuances outlined by the legal authorities. They know what’s best and the only way to respect a region is to respect the laws. Koo ensures that it follows local guidelines for social platforms. Koo also follows the principles outlined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Freedom of speech & expression
Koo believes in freedom of speech. And the responsibilities that come with this freedom. What’s the core responsibility? To be truthful. It’s ok to have an opinion that goes against the grain. In fact true supporters of freedom to speech need to defend the people that go against the grain even if it’s a majority of one. They deserve to be heard as long as it’s truthful. There should be no place for misinformation and false news in our society. While it’s an unavoidable reality of our lives and as entrenched in our online world as rumours are a part of our offline world. While we do our best to fight these demons, it’s important to realize that it’s best fought together as a society. Together we can fight it better than individually.
We believe that all of us are equal. We all have the right to be, have access, grow and be the best versions of ourselves and that the internet should be harnessed, to the best of its potential, to enable that for every world citizen. Users must not be charged for such access, especially to prove that they are human. We will never charge for things like identity proof or access to information. We will use other means of monetization, such as advertising or driving value to other stakeholders, to subsidize free access to people for all of time.
Why the name Koo?
Homing pigeons are the precursors of modern messaging! Until the advent of the telephone, they were the most reliable method of long-distance communication. Koo essentially being a platform where information, thoughts, and opinions are exchanged, we felt a bird would truly reflect what we enable and offer. The logo shows a very happy and approachable yellow bird. That reflects our personality as an organisation. The colour yellow evokes a positive sense of cheerfulness, which fits well with our vision to make Koo a happy and inclusive platform. ‘Koo’ is the sound of a chirping bird. When you create a global brand it’s important to have a simple name that can be pronounced easily by everyone.
How is Koo different from Twitter?
The biggest difference between Koo and Twitter lies in our philosophy. Our mission is to unite the world in spite of the language barriers. Today the world speaks thousands of languages. We want to help everyone talk to each other irrespective of their language. All the features outlined in the blog are a result of our focus on this mission:
- We help users select a language of their choice when they login.
- We show them an entire list of creators they can follow (people tab), in their language. No other social platform does this the way we do.
- In their create section they can create a message and post it in their native language.
- They can also post the same message in multiple global languages, helping them reach out to much larger and diverse language communities. No social platform in the world has this feature and ability. It's our patent pending product flow.
- We help users consume these posts in a language of their choice through the “translation” functionality.
These features help users connect with each other irrespective of the language they speak. Global sports superstar Ronaldinho joined the platform on Nov 24 and he posted in multiple Indian languages and English. Now you won't see him do this on any other platform, including Twitter & Instagram. This is what sets Koo apart from all social platforms in the world! Felipe Neto and many other celebrities have started posting in multiple world languages on Koo.
We are true to our mission in uniting the world in its languages and despite language barriers.
Apart from this we have many new features unique to Koo:
- Multilingual posts
- 10 profile photos vs 1 on other platforms
- Immersive profile page
- 10 image attachments vs 4 on Twitter
- Longer videos for free vs Paid for as per Twitter blue
- Edit functionality
- Scheduling posts feature
- Discovery to New creators through the "New" tab
- Talk to type feature where creators can create a post by speaking out their message.
- Daily summary of statistics everyday sent to creators.
- We also enable all users to get self verified and prove they are human in a very simple and elegant way within seconds, for free. Whereas Twitter will charge its users $8 every month for the same thing!
- We are very transparent as a company. We have published our criteria for getting verified on our site. Our algorithms are public. No social platform in the world has done this.
- We are a neutral organization. We don’t tell our users what to do and what not to. You may have noticed recently that Elon Musk asked users in America to vote for the Republican party if they hadn’t decided yet. That’s a big bias and a social platform can’t and shouldn’t impose its inclinations on its users.
There’s a long list of such things that set Koo apart from Twitter.
Koo houses a very positive and vibrant community that interacts a lot more here than on any other platform in the world. Everyone feels welcome & equal on our platform. We believe in inclusivity. Twitter is more like an exclusive club.
Koo is all about the end users. We respect every user’s rights and want them to feel like they matter here. Koo is a simple and transparent user-friendly platform focused on creating an inclusive global community.
Some of these thoughts will help you know us better. We may not be perfect, but we don’t even claim to be. We are young and small as a team but constantly evolving with the objective of serving mankind to make this a better place. If we make mistakes on the way, we will acknowledge it, inform you, and fix it.
Our only word to you is — this belongs to us. Let’s shape it together.
We welcome you to Koo, the world’s largest democracy. It’s for the people. All of us. Irrespective of who we are, where we come from or what we believe in.
