One of the side effects of Elon Musk’s take on Twitter with his unique way of running the company has been the phenomenal growth some have experienced. alternative platforms. Many users seem to have migrated to look for new options and some have found Koo.

We are talking about an offer of Indian origin, available in 20 languages ​​and with international distribution, making it the second most important microblogging platform in the world. According to its creators, this milestone was made possible by breaking the 60 million global download barrier.

Numbers speak or so it seems

Despite its growing popularity, many people may not have heard of Koo. Sensor Tower data can help us understand this phenomenon. These show that this offer has the highest number of users concentrated in: India, Brazil and Nigeriacurrently has an almost imperceptible presence in Europe.

Koo’s parent, Bombinate Technologies, says the social network has more than 50 million accounts, but it misses an important detail: monetizable daily active users (mDAU), an important metric for measuring public health, and Let’s remember, let’s explore Twitter, Elon Musk’s Twitter became one of its main missions.

However, these values ​​are at odds with Mastodon, a social network for microblogging that is much better known, especially in Europe and America, but has far fewer accounts than The Guardian. decentralized social network, 5.9 million accounts and 1.8 million monetizable active users.

While both proposals are far from reaching Twitter, which boasts around 237 million mDAUs, Koo’s growth is remarkable. That’s why we’re wondering how your offer managed to conquer a large number of users in such a short time (the first version of Koo was released in April 2020). Let’s see.

When opening the Koo mobile app (available in the Play Store and App Store) we find: three icons at the top. On the left, by tapping on our photo, besides editing our profile, we can see our followers and unfollowers, as well as ‘re-Koos’ such as likes, comments, mentions, Twitter at a glance. retweets and saved items.

If we select the fire icon on the right, we can see the popular posts of the last 24 hours. In the middle we find the app icon, which when selected shows us three columns: Feed (posts from followers), People (posts from new users in the area) and New (new posts recommended). At the bottom are Home, Hashtags, Search, DMs and Notifications.

As we can see, Koo’s mechanics are very similar to Twitter’s. The application allows you to use hashtags, linking, multimedia content and polls. It’s also possible to start ‘Koo’, which is the equivalent of a Tweet but consists of 400 characters and contains up to one minute of voice memos. Although there is no alternative like Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue, the platform even has its own corresponding account verification system.

The rise of this new social network, as we said, may be due to the migration of Twitter users, but that is not the only factor supporting it. In early February 2021, some Indian government ministers moved to Koo after Twitter refused to block certain activists’ accounts, citing freedom of expression, the Japan Times reported. This was followed by high-profile people in the country, including Bollywood actors.

However, some challenges lie on the horizon for the future of the social network. The first of these is its international expansion. Koo is available in a large number of countries, but the majority of its users are still within the borders of India and it is starting to rise in Brazil. Will it be able to establish itself in Europe? We will know in time.

Images: koo | Screenshots of Play Store and Koo on iOS

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