An Indian version of the microblogging site Twitter is seemingly gaining popularity among Union ministers and the government departments, especially in the backdrop of a row with the US-based social media giant.
The app named Koo, boasts of the presence of key ministers including Ravi Shankar Prasad and Piyush Goyal, media companies like Republic Bharat, spiritual leader Jaggi Vasudev and former cricketers Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble, among others. Koo, an Indian microblogging website, was developed by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka in March 2020. It had won the AatmaNirbhar App Innovation Challenge held by the Government of India in August 2020. The stated aim of the site is to provide a social media platform in Indian languages. Koo’s parent company is Bombinate Technologies Private Limited, a Bangalore-based private company incorporated in 2015. the app has crossed over 3 million downloads, growing 4x in the past six months, and expects the growth to be considerably more exponential from now onward.
Users on Koo can share posts, audio, video and photos on the platform. Like Twitter, Koo users can use hashtags, tag others using the @ symbol and chat with others over DMs. The character limit for a ‘Koo’ is 400, as opposed to Twitter’s character limit of 280. Koo is available for download on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
