The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
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Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#2Not saying that what they did is not commendable (in my mind even if you get more than 10 users, your app/site is already great), but ultimately it was a copy. There was nothing original as such. Just an app with Indianised version of a bird sound won't work in the long haul right ?
Also their user base gain was because of controversies, you bring controversial public, they're gonna want that sort of environment.
One more thing worked for them was Nationalism, Indian platform, for Indians, by the Indians type of thing. That also will only take you so far.
I still like the app, it's just that, it's not going to be the "Big thing" that they promised their investors.
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#3Never heard of it here in the US, fwiw
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#4By the way, they also had an interesting article last year about Koo in Nigeria:
restofworld.org/2023/nigeria-koo-twitter-rival-flop/.
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#5Twitter dies as soon as free money stops. Many internet companies are zombies or even worse
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#6Social media in subcontinent is really hard since the ARPU is really low compared to the cost required to sustain that scale. All the existing one prevail because most of their revenue comes from US + EU to balance out additional cost in resources.
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#7People are out of ideas. Twitter but for India. Twitter but not owned Elon Musk. Twitter but integrated with substack. Twitter but federated. Twitter but decentralized. Will any of these do better? Possibly the last two, if someone builts an innovative user experience on top of them.
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#8Some businesses are good for regulatory arbitrage. Others are good businesses but you can use regulatory arbitrage to get a foothold. This was neither.
The arb was that they had advantages as a local firm willing to play in the niche of providing local governments an advantage. But that's not enough to provide a social network.
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#9People are out of ideas. Twitter but for India. Twitter but not owned Elon Musk. Twitter but integrated with substack. Twitter but federated. Twitter but decentralized. Will any of these do better? Possibly the last two, if someone builts an innovative user experience on top of them.
They've been trying the latter for years. Consumers don't really care too much.
Re: The rise and fall of Koo, India’s once-thriving Twitter alternative
#10Twitter dies as soon as free money stops. Many internet companies are zombies or even worse
Interest rates have been above guaranteed yields for some time now. When does the free money end?