Will Keralites embrace Koo and shun Twitter? This is the hot debate happening among Twitteratis in Kerala after Twitter’s brand image has gone for a spin following reports of mass job cuts.
Even its new boss Elon Musk’s announcement to introduce a fee of $8 per month for blue tick verified accounts haven’t gone down well with Twitter users in Kerala. Koo hasn’t been a major crowd puller in Kerala so far as majority of Malayalees refused to consider it as an alternative to Twitter.
But with Musk laying off employees and hardening his stand on implementing a price on blue tick, Malayalees have started to consider Koo as a mark of protest against Musk.
“It’s ridiculous. Twitter exists because of its users. It’s a public media and not something privileged to the elite class. Musk can’t be so arrogant,” said Mahesh Kumar, a 29-year-old techie at Infopark. “We can always opt for Koo. I think Malayalees will gradually shift to Koo,” he said.
Thomas Mathew, an owner of a startup in Kochi, said Koo was never an option but it will be soon. “Throwing out employees one fine day hasn’t gone down well with the general public,” he said. Meanwhile, there are a section of others who think that Musk should have taken such a decision based on some specific reasons. “If he has bought the company, he is free to do whatever he wants. If anyone doesn’t like his decisions, just close down the Twitter account and move on,” said Gireesh P J, another techie.
A social media expert said Twitter’s negative brand image would be a boon to Koo. “Already many have started to join Koo. Everything in social media has a viral aspect. If there is a trend to boycott Twitter, it will catch up,” she said. In an interview to Hindustan Times a few months back, Koo co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna said that Koo was getting tremendous response from people in India.
He said Koo achieved a major milestone of 15 million downloads within the first 20 months of its launch. “Our first 10 million downloads happened in about a year and half, while the next five million users joined the platform in a quarter. This indicates that the Koo App is being adopted at an accelerated pace. As we move ahead, backed by our unique language features which provide an immersive experience, we are confident of outperforming ourselves and scaling at a rapid pace to hit 100 million downloads,” he said in the interview.
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