Koo eyes Nigeria market after Twitter ban

Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and CEO of Indian microblogging platform Koo said on Saturday it was considering enabling the local languages of Nigeria on its platform as the app is available there.

The developments came after Nigeria indefinitely suspended Twitter’s activities on Friday after the social media platform deleted a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari.

Through posts on Twitter, the official Twitter account of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, Nigeria, stated that the federal government was indefinitely suspending the operations of Twitter.

The minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed announced the suspension on Friday citing persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s ‘corporate existence.’

Posts on the hashtag Nigeria were trending on Twitter on Saturday garnering over a million tweets.

In a tweet on Saturday, Radhakrishna said: “Koo is available in Nigeria. We are thinking of enabling the local languages there too. What say?”

He also posted a screenshot of places such as Rwanda, Philippines, Niger, Peru and Paraguay where Koo was available besides Nigeria and another screenshot which mentioned the languages spoken in Nigeria.

Twitter stated on Saturday that it was ‘deeply concerned’ by the blocking of the platform in Nigeria. “Access to free and open internet is an essential right in modern human society. We will work to restore access for all those in Nigeria who rely on Twitter to communicate and connect with the world,” the company said in a statement issued from its public policy account from the platform.

Late last month, after Twitter’s run-in with the Indian government and the Delhi police, which was marked by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issuing a rebuttal to the company on Koo, Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of Koo told ET downloads of the app and engagement on the platform were up by about five times over the course of three days.

Bidawatka had said many users were looking for alternative platforms to ‘speak their mind’ given how things were going with other platforms right now.

“Platforms need to act like enablers and not judge the content from their own point of view. If users feel targeted by a platform because of its biased approach, it can be a breach of trust and a fundamental disconnect,” he had said.