Koo app, an Indian alternative to Twitter, was, back in 2020, announced the winner of the Indian government’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat app challenge. The app, available both for ios and android, lets users tweet in different Indian languages.
The app made news when it was announced the winner of the aforementioned competition but it soon faded from the limelight. However, it has once again regained the headlines owing to the ongoing tiff between Twitter and the Indian government over the latter’s recent orders to the microblogging site and the former not complying with those.
As Twitter refused to take down some content that the government had ordered it to remove, government bodies like MeitY, and even politicians like Piyush Goyal, have been tweeting about Koo and their accounts on that platform.
What is Koo?
Koo is just like the microblogging site Twitter. It has been developed by Aprameya Radhakrishna, who is the co-founder and CEO. The app allows you to share your opinions, just like Twitter, in multiple Indian languages.
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“Just 10 percent of India speaks English. Almost 1 billion people in India don’t know English. Instead they speak one of India’s 100s of languages. They are now getting access to smartphones and would love an internet in their language.” It goes on to state, “Koo is an attempt to make the voice of these Indians heard. They can now participate on the internet in their mother tongue by listening to the views of some of the sharpest Indian minds and also speak their mind by sharing their thoughts.”
Why Koo is in News?
After the recent January 26 violence, the government has asked Twitter to block over 1000 accounts. Though Twitter took action against some of these accounts, which were spreading misinformation and provocative content about the protests but it didn’t take action against the accounts of people like politicians, journalists and more.
As all this happened, Union Minister Piyush Goyal tweeted about joining Koo app and following the same, many other goverenmtn officials and ministries began showing off their account on Koo. Currently, the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), India Post, MyGovIndia, and National Informatics Centre (NIC) are some that have their account on the platform.
Koo Features?
Koo has many features similar to that of Twitter. It allows users to follow individuals. You can write messages in text or share them in audio or video formats. It has Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Tamil, and English language options, with others coming soon.
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Messages can be written in upto 400 characters and are called “Koo”.
