Tired of all the nonsense with Twitter and the daily headlines of Elon Musk wreaking havoc on the app?
A new social site, called Koo could be the answer to your woes.
Established in 2019 in India, the platform was launched in late 2022 in the USA and is starting to capture an American audience. With Koo, users can share all the same things Twitter does – posts, photos, video, audio, and the hashtag system works the same way. You also have the ability to DM and chat just like Twitter.
So, what’s the difference?
Really, the look and feel along with a few other things.
To me, Koo resembles a nice mix between Instagram and Twitter. It’s got the concept of Twitter’s short and sweet content combined with photos front and center like Instagram, so the interface looks uncluttered and visually appealing. Koo calls the site a micro-blog which is really just a fancy way of saying you only have so many characters to get your point across. In Koo’s case there’s a limit of 400 compared to Twitter’s 280.
Musk has mentioned he’d like to upgrade to 4000 – which I’m not sure is a great change – after all the whole point of these type of platforms is to be able to read things fast and move on to the next snippet of news. 400 characters from Koo feels nice and comfy, just enough to really say something without the struggle of cutting it down to fit. Koo’s feed looks different as well – it’s arranged chronologically and is divided into two sections, ‘feed’ and ‘people’ as discussed by Republic World.
What’s been the response to Koo?
So far people seem to really like it.
Downloadable from the Apple App and Google Play stores, it has a rating of 4.4 stars on Apple and 4.2 on Google. Koo does have some usability issues if you read the reviews, but that’s to be expected with such a new platform. 2023 will see if they can get those kinks out. Currently, it’s had 60 million downloads across the world and is in 100 countries, so the response has been positive. Verification is also free which could give Twitter a run if they begin charging $4.99 for it through their Blue subscription.
Another interesting aspect of Koo is that it’s taken the plunge to use ChatGPT on the app. As reported on by Reuters, the company’s co-founder, Mayank Bidawatka, shared that “the platform will be the first to integrate the technology into the ability to compose posts” and that the artificial intelligence will “help creators get inspiration on what to create… they could ask (ChatGPT) for the trending news in their region and then write their thoughts.”
How does Koo deal with the Adult Industry?
Koo’s community guidelines state there will be no “Graphic, Obscene and Sexual Content” allowed, so you’ll have to make your profile and posts completely PG which makes it a less attractive option than Twitter whose rules are more friendly. That said, it’s worth looking into as it could be a competitor to Twitter in the near future and you may want to get a running start to build up your presence before or if it becomes the next big thing.
Photo credit: iStock.com/hapabapa
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Alyssa Collins hails from Minnesota, where snowy days were the perfect excuse to stay warm inside and write. Over the years, she turned that joy into a career and has authored numerous articles for various publications (under pen names). Email Alyssa via alyssa@ynot.com.
