Koo, Twitter's new desi alternative from India has gained several prominent followers in recent days including Ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal and Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Koo, the desi version of Twitter has become the new medium of conversation as several ministries and union ministries have created their accounts on the platform. The centre has shown immediate interest in Koo after Twitter failed to respond to a government's notice sent last week. The notice mentioned blocking around 257 tweets and accounts that were tweeting about 'Farmer Genocide'. Ministry of Electronics Uses Koo, India’s Own Micro-Blogging Platform, To React on Twitter’s Blog Post on Blocking Accounts.

Koo App
Koo App (Photo Credits: Google Play Store)

Koo is more like Twitter, a social media app which was launched in March last year. The app has won Prime Minister's Aatma Nirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge and the PM has also encouraged Indians to use the Koo app in his Mann Ki Baat speech. Currently, the Koo app supports four Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada whereas Punjabi, Bangla, Oriya, Malayalam and Assamese will be added soon. The app is available for download via Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

Koo App
Koo App (Photo Credits: Google Play Store)

Koo app was launched by a Bengaluru based startup co-founded by Aprameya Radhakrishna who is also its CEO. The app enables users to write opinions on anything via text, audio or video. A user can either convey thoughts in 400 characters or a one-minute video. Just like Twitter, Koo also has DM feature that allows users to interact with each other, users can also attach web links or YouTube videos, use hashtags and tag people by using '@'. With close to 2.5 million downloads and a million active users, the app has a 4.7-star rating on Google Play Store. The major difference between Koo and Twitter is that to create an account, Twitter just asks for an email ID whereas the Koo app requires a valid mobile number which is verified via an OTP to get registered for the first time.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 10, 2021 03:41 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).