After Nigeria bans Twitter, India's Koo eyes an expansion opportunity

Indian microblogging platform Koo may consider drawing in Nigerian audiences to the platform by providing its interface in the local languages of that country. 
 

“@kooindia is available in Nigeria. We're thinking of enabling the local languages there too. What say?” wrote Koo cofounder Aprameya Radhakrishna on Twitter. 
 

On Friday, the Nigerian government indefinitely suspended Twitter, after the social media giant had deleted a tweet from the country’s President Muhammadu Buhari's account for violating its rules.

In India too, Twitter has been engaged in a month-long offensive with the Indian government. In the last few months, the Centre asked Twitter to censor tweets that supported the farmers’ protest at the borders of Delhi or were critical of the country’s Covid response. Twitter didn’t always comply with these requests, which led to tensions between the two sides. The social media giant is yet to comply with India’s new IT rules for digital media intermediaries, as it feels that the rules could undermine the freedom of speech and the privacy of its users. 
 

Amid these tensions between Twitter and the Indian government, Koo has witnessed increased traction, with several ministers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also endorsing it. 
 

Koo, which claims to have six million users, was also the first significant social media intermediary to announce that it was complying with the new IT rules.
 

Launched in March 2020, Koo is a vernacular microblogging platform with very similar features to Twitter. Its interface is available in several Indian languages, namely Hindi, English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bangla and Gujarati. Except for Telugu, Twitter’s interface can also be viewed in these languages