The Nigerian government has joined Indian-owned microblogging platform, Koo, barely a week after suspending the operations of American-owned microblogging site, Twitter in the country.
The Nigerian Government’s verified account on Koo with the name ‘Government of Nigeria’ @nigeriagov, has 6,000 followers at the moment.
Koo co-founder and CEO, Aprameya Radhakrishna in a post shared on his Twitter account @aprameya, confirmed Nigerian government’s presence on Koo.
He tweeted;
“A very warm welcome to the official handle of the Government of Nigeria on @kooindia! Spreading wings beyond India now”
Koo is an Indian microblogging and social networking service based in Bengaluru, India. Formerly known as Ku Koo Ku, the app was developed by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka.
It won the Government of India’s Aatmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge in August 2020. The app is currently valued at over $100 million.
Even in India, the progress of Koo came in the backdrop of the Indian government’s several disagreements with Twitter. In the last almost six months, the Centre asked Twitter to remove several tweets and suspend accounts it deemed unlawful. Twitter did not comply with these requests on all occasions leading to friction between the two sides.
According to the government, Twitter is also yet to comply with India’s new IT rules for digital media intermediaries.
Last month, Koo announced a $30-million fundraise from marquee investors including Tiger Global at a time Indian authorities were turning the heat on Twitter. The fund-raise saw Koo’s valuation jump nearly five-fold to $100 million.
