Coochy Kooing celebs

Sheetal

Post the request to ban what our government alleges anti-nationalist tweets and accounts, which are creating an internal unrest, the ministers of central government have taken the inroads to voice their opinion via Koo app. The award-winning app, Koo is being downloaded at a fast rate and celebs including the likes of Anupam Kher, Subhash Ghai, Suzanne Bernert have already started kooing, because it lets you share your thoughts in the regional languages. After all, India is all things global with a tinge of culture and sanskar mixed in different proportions for each individual.

Will tweet about Koo

Tweet wars are regular phenomena. This time, it’s Twitter versus Koo and the fight takes place on Twitter yet again. If there are memes doing the rounds for asking to ban Twitter on Twitter, then celebs that are trolled for their far left political views are saying goodbye to pro-government accounts.

Actress Swara Bhasker is the first one to jump in celebration and writes, “My loving farewell to all the trolls, Bhakt-mandali and nafrati chintus flocking to #Koo #kooapp Miss me guys!”

“Hurray, the bhakts are leaving @twitter. Will #Koo be a coup? Hardly likely as it sounds drearily and dreadfully sarkari,” says the tweet of author, columnist Sagrika Ghose.

Making the move

Songs such as Tujhe yaad karenge and Humko hamin se chura lo are being compared to the situation of celebs and politicians. The question is whether stars with millions of followers on Twitter will forsake the app? If the ever-so-courageous Kangana Ranaut has moved to the new app but is not ready to reveal her Koo account, many will have second thoughts. On Wednesday, she announced on Twitter, “Your time is up @Twitter time to shift to #kooapp will inform everyone soon about my account details there. Absolutely thrilled to experience home grown #kooapp.”

Creating a stir

Kangana has been taking a dig at Jack Dorsey, CEO Twitter, for quite some time now and also refers to him as Jack chacha. Sharing a news report that Twitter has suffered a net loss of $1.14 billion in year 2020, she writes, “This is just the beginning of your end .... watch out for 2021 data @jack”. In another tweet she writes, “Honourable Prime Minister ji jo galti Great warrior Prithaviraj Chauhan ji ne ki thi woh bilkul mat karna .... uss galti ka naam tha maafi... kitni bhi maafi mange bilkul maaf mat karna. (Honourable Prime Minister, please do not repeat that one mistake of great warrior Prithvi Raj Chauhan, that is of forgiveness. No matter how many times they ask for it, don’t give it in) @Twitter. They conspired for a civil war in India. #BanTwitterInIndia”

Been there, done that

What comes as a surprise is that German-Indian actress Suzanne Bernert, who was seen in The Accidental Prime Minister as Sonia Gandhi, has been using the Koo app since July, 2020. Calling herself one of the early believers of the app, she tweets, “What’s with #Koo all of a sudden? Am on it since July 2020, Aur haan, Hindi mein (And yes, that too in Hindi).”

Actress Prreit Kamal is exploring the app. She says, "Promoting local is great news. I haven't gotten a chance to explore it much but I have downloaded the app and observed it has user-friendly interface.”

Devil is in the detail

When we are competing against a global app, every single detail matters. Developers think of security as an after-thought. If Koo gets its act together, and manages its perception properly, it can become the default social network for Indians. The next battle is going to be on the vernacular ground. Twitter is limited mostly to elites. I’m rooting for Koo. If the next election campaign happens on Koo (in regional languages), we will know it has dethroned Twitter in India. —Tech expert Joseph Jude

About the app

• Launched in March, 2020
• Co-founded by entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka
• Won the government’s Atmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge that brought it into the spotlight.
• In place of retweet, it gives the option to rekoo and verified accounts will be shown with a yellow tick mark.
• It also gives an easy access to directly share the koos on Facebook and Whatsapp
• Besides English, it is available in four Indian languages, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese, Punjabi, Malayalam, Oriya and Bengali will soon be added to its data base.

First feel

Amish Tripathi

“I am finding Koo layout better actually... And the search functionality has certainly improved.”

Subhash Ghai

“Sukh bhare din beete re bhaiya ab such payo re rangeen jeevan mein layo re. Wish you all great a beginning of 2021 with #KOO being a proud Indian joining Indian social media. Koo. Spread love.”

Anupam Kher

“Jai Ho”