The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative(restofworld.org)
restofworld.org
The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
https://restofworld.org/2024/twitter-alternative-koo/
44 comments
Social media in subcontinent is really hard since the ARPU is really low compared to the cost required to sustain that scale. All the existing one prevail because most of their revenue comes from US + EU to balance out additional cost in resources.
Very unfortunate name for a company that wanted to expand in Brazil. In Portuguese, Koo is homophonous with the word for a**hole, so it's not a surprise it didn't stick.
Not to say it wasn't humorous though. People had a lot of fun talking about and asking others about their Koos.
Not to say it wasn't humorous though. People had a lot of fun talking about and asking others about their Koos.
Koo, I believe, is named after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo#Calls
> People had a lot of fun talking about and asking others about their Koos.
You just might enjoy the opening sequence of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yek4hrl25qU&t=23
> People had a lot of fun talking about and asking others about their Koos.
You just might enjoy the opening sequence of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yek4hrl25qU&t=23
Perhaps this as well: https://youtu.be/hwRNWQ2FwvQ?si=aLE4F7VCmo5cEJNd
like bird tweets and cuckoo koo's
For targeting Brazil it seems like they didn't do the basic marketing 101 check to see if that one syllable words is by chance something to stay away from in that target market.
> Not to say it wasn't humorous though. People had a lot of fun talking about and asking others about their Koos.
Probably helped with some initial hype with some people just to be able to joke about it. Is it a bit like Mastodon's "toots", I guess. It was funny for a bit, then it was just eye rolling.
On the other hand in Russian and ex-Soviet space, "koo" would a great reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza! a movie by Georgiy Daneliya.
> The natives of the planet appear human, with deceptively primitive-looking technology and a barbaric culture, which satirically resembles that of humans. They are telepathic; the only spoken words normally used in their culture are "ku" (koo) and "kyu" (kyoo), the former stands for everything good, the latter being a swear word that stands for every bad thing.
> Not to say it wasn't humorous though. People had a lot of fun talking about and asking others about their Koos.
Probably helped with some initial hype with some people just to be able to joke about it. Is it a bit like Mastodon's "toots", I guess. It was funny for a bit, then it was just eye rolling.
On the other hand in Russian and ex-Soviet space, "koo" would a great reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza! a movie by Georgiy Daneliya.
> The natives of the planet appear human, with deceptively primitive-looking technology and a barbaric culture, which satirically resembles that of humans. They are telepathic; the only spoken words normally used in their culture are "ku" (koo) and "kyu" (kyoo), the former stands for everything good, the latter being a swear word that stands for every bad thing.
Audi made the same mistake with their "E-tron" car which means "Audi turd" in french.
It is, but it's not a widely used word either, and French are mostly fine with this kind of collision.
Given the number of words with "bit/byte" for instance there's a point they just let it go.
Given the number of words with "bit/byte" for instance there's a point they just let it go.
Koo was started as a response to X/Twitter because the Indian R/W ecosystem couldn't stand the fact that Musk spoke against the rampant and one-sided censorship requests that Twitter was receiving from the Indian govt.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56007451
After koo was announced many of the supporters of India's R/W central govt switched over to Koo boosting its numbers.. but as with Meta's Threads, it was inevitable that the platform would lose its shine quickly
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56007451
After koo was announced many of the supporters of India's R/W central govt switched over to Koo boosting its numbers.. but as with Meta's Threads, it was inevitable that the platform would lose its shine quickly
That story is from 2021, which is before Musk purchased Twitter.
The biggest boost for the platform, however, came from the standoff between India’s ruling party and X. The latter was caught in a tough spot in early 2021, when it refused to give in to the government’s requests to remove certain posts and accounts that were critical of the Modi government.
Ahhh
Ahhh
SaaS companies rise and fall all the time. I didn't get any sense of what was special about this tale.
A lot of "this happened, and then this happened," but I would have liked some more insight.
A lot of "this happened, and then this happened," but I would have liked some more insight.
Koo was practically backed by the BJP, the dominant political party in India. It was the soft propaganda arm of the government.
Some businesses are good for regulatory arbitrage. Others are good businesses but you can use regulatory arbitrage to get a foothold. This was neither.
The arb was that they had advantages as a local firm willing to play in the niche of providing local governments an advantage. But that's not enough to provide a social network.
The arb was that they had advantages as a local firm willing to play in the niche of providing local governments an advantage. But that's not enough to provide a social network.
By the way, they also had an interesting article last year about Koo in Nigeria:
restofworld.org/2023/nigeria-koo-twitter-rival-flop/.
Not saying that what they did is not commendable (in my mind even if you get more than 10 users, your app/site is already great), but ultimately it was a copy. There was nothing original as such. Just an app with Indianised version of a bird sound won't work in the long haul right ?
Also their user base gain was because of controversies, you bring controversial public, they're gonna want that sort of environment.
One more thing worked for them was Nationalism, Indian platform, for Indians, by the Indians type of thing. That also will only take you so far.
I still like the app, it's just that, it's not going to be the "Big thing" that they promised their investors.
Also their user base gain was because of controversies, you bring controversial public, they're gonna want that sort of environment.
One more thing worked for them was Nationalism, Indian platform, for Indians, by the Indians type of thing. That also will only take you so far.
I still like the app, it's just that, it's not going to be the "Big thing" that they promised their investors.
So many (perhaps most) successful apps and platforms are copies. It's not an argument for or against success.
Even Airplane was a copy!
Even Airplane was a copy!
Why every new social media clone looks the same?
I don't know much about large scale projects, but wouldn't hosting videos become a huge cost in a project like this? Many social medias didn't have video support until they were huge. In fact, I think Plurk still doesn't support it, even though it has existed for 16 years.
But the other day I learned about this "TikTok" thing that is video-centric, and that there is a clone called Kwai, which is also video-centric, and that everyone seems to want a platform to share videos for some reason.
I don't know much about large scale projects, but wouldn't hosting videos become a huge cost in a project like this? Many social medias didn't have video support until they were huge. In fact, I think Plurk still doesn't support it, even though it has existed for 16 years.
But the other day I learned about this "TikTok" thing that is video-centric, and that there is a clone called Kwai, which is also video-centric, and that everyone seems to want a platform to share videos for some reason.
For an average person, video is easier to consume. That means it's easier to create a loop resulting in much better engagement
Koo was never thriving.
Yep.
That's the feeling I always got.
It was just a place for RWingers of India. Even that could be an interesting place. But it wasn’t.
I tried reading Koo once or twice, and I wasn’t interested in anything.
I don't have any preemptive beef against Commies or Indian RW or whoever, but that platform had more saffron color than the BJP party office. Saffron border, bland white background, and saffron checkmarks for verified accounts. Total UI design hell.
No wonder it failed.
That's the feeling I always got.
It was just a place for RWingers of India. Even that could be an interesting place. But it wasn’t.
I tried reading Koo once or twice, and I wasn’t interested in anything.
I don't have any preemptive beef against Commies or Indian RW or whoever, but that platform had more saffron color than the BJP party office. Saffron border, bland white background, and saffron checkmarks for verified accounts. Total UI design hell.
No wonder it failed.
Koo was the Indian equivalent of Truth Social
Just a vile place filled with some of the most blatantly misogynistic, racist, hatefilled content.
But now that the Twitter is happy to host all these people, Koo was destined to fail
Just a vile place filled with some of the most blatantly misogynistic, racist, hatefilled content.
But now that the Twitter is happy to host all these people, Koo was destined to fail
People are out of ideas. Twitter but for India. Twitter but not owned Elon Musk. Twitter but integrated with substack. Twitter but federated. Twitter but decentralized. Will any of these do better? Possibly the last two, if someone builts an innovative user experience on top of them.
They've been trying the latter for years. Consumers don't really care too much.
Variations on the same basic idea compete all the time, it doesn't mean people are out of ideas; it's literally the opposite.
And Twitter is just RSS with a textbox.
Here's a fun fact about federated Twitter by the way: ActivityPub is just a JSON-ified reinvention of SMTP.
Here's a fun fact about federated Twitter by the way: ActivityPub is just a JSON-ified reinvention of SMTP.
Where email only has inboxes and messages, ActivityPub also has HTTP-esque verbs. (Email can do everything ActivityPub can, in principle, but it has to send emails to do so. When an ActivityPub verb isn't understood, it's ignored, whereas when an email message isn't understood, it's presented to the user.)
Many twitter clones are almost pixel perfect. Twitter started with SMS support, and added many other unique things like @ mentions, threads that worked on mobile and the way you would see conversations between people if you followed both of them.
What’s the twitter that’s not owned by musk? Because I’m surprised there isn’t a single twitter clone alternative.
Truth social. It's not Musk but you know who else it is.
BlueSky? Threads by Mark Zuckerberg?
They’re not true clones. Bluesky is decentralized something and threads is hidden away in instagram.
What? Bluesky is Twitter with decentralization, yes, but so what? And Threads us a full, separate app, not just a page in Instagram (if that's what you mean)
Never heard of it here in the US, fwiw
Twitter dies as soon as free money stops. Many internet companies are zombies or even worse
Surely twitter's value isn't in its revenue.... you can make a lot more money openly manipulating public opinion in a socially acceptable manner. See: why rich people buy newspapers.
Even GameStop makes more money than Twitter
Interest rates have been above guaranteed yields for some time now. When does the free money end?
Someone is still stuck owning the companies. There seems to be some inertia there. Our Benefactors don't always shut down a company the moment it becomes unprofitable, when it took 15 years to get to the position it's in today. If the tide reverses and the company becomes profitable again, they're not waiting another 15 years to restart it, if that's even possible.