What does koo mean in portuguese?
On Friday, Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO of Koo, told Rest of World that “we have seen an influx of users from Brazil for the last 16 hours and already have close to a million Brazilians who have joined the platform.” Apptopia, a U.S.-based company that tracks app and mobile device data, confirmed to Rest of World that at least 500,000 users in Brazil downloaded the app between this past Friday and Sunday.
When asked why he thought Brazilians were flocking to the app, Radhakrishna replied “the world is looking for a Twitter alternative right now.” Some Brazilian users told Rest of World that, rather than picking Koo as a Twitter alternative, they were amused by the platform’s name.
“Koo” is homophonous with the word for “ass” in Portuguese. On November 19, Felipe Neto, a Brazilian celebrity influencer with 15.4 million Twitter followers, tweeted out, “My goal is to have the biggest koo in Brazil,” and linked to his Koo account. He now has Koo’s most popular Brazilian handle with close to half a million followers at time of publication. Koo claims to currently have over 50 million users worldwide.
Before last week, Koo was virtually unknown in Brazil. “I’d never heard of Koo before Thursday,” said Hernani Silva, a marketing expert from São Paulo, told Rest of World. “And when I looked for a “Plan B” this Indian app never showed up in my research.”
The influx of new users prompted the India-based Koo team to focus its efforts on supporting users in Brazil. The company’s official Twitter account posted photos of staff members pulling an all-nighter to keep servers working. Despite that, many users reported that Koo was slow or unresponsive in Brazil after being overwhelmed. The company launched a Portuguese version of the app on Sunday.
Koo’s sudden success in Brazil came with a series of technical issues. Hackers exploited them, with one gaining access to Felipe Neto’s account, though the company claimed that all his data was safe even if the hacker was able to post under the temporarily stolen account.
Koo’s official Twitter account admitted in a Portuguese-language post that, “Our team relaxed the security a bit to make sure everyone could get their OTP and the hacker used this flaw.”
“Twitter has a large history of being a cornerstone of digital communication for a large group of Brazilian users. That won’t go away in a blink of an eye,” Carlos Affonso Souza, director of the Rio de Janeiro Institute for Technology and Society, told Rest of World. “Koo could turn out to be a safety measure for Brazilians that fear that Twitter might either shut down or change dramatically the way it operates. Ironically, this safety measure might end up not being entirely safe considering that little is known by Brazilians about how reliable Koo actually is.”
When asked about whether they were worried about the security risks inherent in Koo, users were generally sanguine. “These problems already exist on Twitter and Instagram,” said Bruna Paese, an entrepreneur from Florianópolis in the south of Brazil. “Extremists use Whatsapp groups and Telegram to share their hate.”
Koo’s interface, which is yellow and white, is similar to that of Twitter. It, too, enables users to categorise their posts with hashtags and tag other users in mentions or replies. In May 2021, Koo introduced a new feature ‘Talk to Type’ that allows its users to create a post with the app’s voice assistant. Koo marks verified accounts with a yellow-coloured check mark.
The platform recently announced four new features for the app, giving users more control over their posts. With this update, users will be able to save a Koo (which is the post), schedule Koos, and also save drafts – similar to Twitter. Koo will now also allow users to upload up to 10 profile pictures as well.
A multilingual platform and transparent verification process are a few standouts that the network boasts of.
The Tiger-backed platform took little time to grow as it was actively promoted by the Indian government as part of its ‘Make-in-India’ initiative. Koo emerged as the winner in the ‘social networking’ category in the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge’ that was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2020 to create cutting-edge Indian apps.
Since then, the Information Technology Ministry has used Koo to broadcast its differences from Twitter, which has fuelled the platform’s growth. With the Indian government frequently getting into hot water with Twitter over the latter’s free speech policies, several ministers, bureaucrats, and actors switched to Koo.
Union minister Piyush Goyal, with over 9.5 million followers on Twitter, was one of the first imminent personalities to sign up with Koo. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, author Amish Tripathi, Shri Sadhguru, cricketers Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath, former Karnataka deputy chief minister Dr Ashwath Narayan, MP Tejasvi Surya and Ashutosh Rana were other popular persons to hop onto the Koo bandwagon early on.
Twitter-rival Koo, which has been working to expand its user base across the world, logged over 1 million downloads within 48 hours of launch in Brazil with the portuguese language on November 18.
In a statement, Koo said: “India’s multilingual microblogging platform, Koo App, was launched in Brazil with the addition of the Portuguese language, making it available in 11 native languages now”.
Owing to the “tremendous response” from Brazil users with over 1 million user downloads, the company said it had managed to occupy the top spot on both Android Play Store and Apple App Store for the last few days.
The platform currently features popular Brazilian celebrities such as actor Babu Santana, singer Claudia Leitte, and author Rosana Hermann.
However, many believe that the large number of registrations on Koo could be due to users’ inclination to participate in a joke. Koo sounds like a word in Portuguese that means butthole. Koo, too, acknowledged the joke, and explained that it just means the “sound of this cute yellow bird.”
Koo even opened a poll to find out if Brazilian users wanted the app’s name in Brazil to be changed the users preferred going forward with the same name with more than 70% voting for it.
Within hours of rollout, Koo users in Brazil started complaining of issues such as trouble accessing the site and viewing followers.
The Bengaluru-headquartered company also faced moderation and security problems in the country. Hackers took control of popular influencer Felipe Neto’s Koo account and posted that they were warning users of the social network’s poor security. Later, in a separate thread, Neto said that Koo’s founder got in touch with him and resolved the account takeover issue within minutes. Neto is currently one of the most popular Brazilian accounts on the platform with more than 500,000 followers.
Several Koo users tweeted that the platform was used by some to share Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), which is a crime under Bazilian laws and offenders can face penalties. Koo responded by saying that it was actively working to prevent such activity on its platform.
Although Koo has emerged as the most successful homegrown social network so far, the platform has been equated with many right-wing social networks like China’s Weibo, which has a close association with the Chinese government and its supporters, and Parler, a US-based social media application that became popular among supporters of former US President Donald Trump, as well as conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon.
Its founder Radhakrishna has, however, maintained that the platform has an apolitical stance.
The social network company is actively collaborating with the Indian government on several projects. On May 27, 2022, the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises and Export Promotion Department, Government of Uttar Pradesh signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Koo App, to promote its ‘One District, One Product’ initiative. In July, the company tapped into Hyderabad’s robust technology ecosystem by signing an MoU with the Telangana Government to open a Development Center in Hyderabad.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup claims it has already amassed over 1 million downloads in Brazil. Analytics company Sensor Tower corroborates the claim, saying the app saw 973,000 installs from the App Store and Play Store between November 14 and 20. Sensor Tower’s charts for both App Store and Play Store indicate that Koo was the top app in the country during the period.
A lot of users might be joining the platform to participate in a joke, though. Koo sounds like a word in Portuguese that means butthole. So, there are plenty of backside-related jokes on both Twitter and Koo with even brands like gaming company Razer participating in it. Koo also acknowledged the joke and explained that it just means the “sound of this cute yellow bird.”
Over the last few days, Koo has added native support for Portuguese on the app and has been working with onboarding brands like Burger King.
Within hours of launching, Koo users in Brazil faced issues accessing the site. The social network also had bugs like users not being able to see their followers.
Koo is also facing moderation and security problems after its Brazil launch. Hackers took control of popular influencer Felipe Neto’s Koo account for a while. The attackers posted that they were warning users of the social network’s lack of security. The company explained on its Portuguese-language Twitter account that it “relaxed our security for the last 2 hours to resolve the OTP issue” and all user data is safe.
In a separate thread, Neto said that the social network’s founder got in touch with him and resolved the account takeover issue within minutes. He is currently one of the most popular Brazilian accounts on the platform with more than 500,000 followers.
What’s more, local media reports pointed out that many users have already created fake profiles impersonating politicians like former president Jair Bolsonaro. The report noted that users have made profiles in the name of right-wing activist Carla Zambelli, who has been banned from all social media platforms. Koo’s own handles on Twitter are not verified, so it is easy to come across an impersonating account with thousands of followers and mistake it for an official account.
The company said it’s banning fake profiles while verifying legitimate accounts. For its own accounts, the social network said it follows the nomenclature of KooForCountry — for example, KooForIndia or KooForBrazil — but it’s hard to make that out just by looking at the handle. The India-based company said it has applied for verification on Twitter. However, given the current uncertain state of the verification program on the Elon Musk-led platform, there’s no definite timeline for when it will get a verified mark.
The platform seems to be struggling with moderation issues as well. Several tweets suggested that Koo is rife with child sexual abuse material (CSAM). In some tweets, Koo said that it is actively blocking these accounts. Under the country’s laws, CSAM is a crime and offenders can face punitive action. It told TechCrunch in an email that using machine-learning-based tools it has removed 3,000 pieces of content in the last few days. Plus, it is blocking users who interact with such content.
The company noted that to handle moderation, it is in the process of hiring folks who are well versed in Brazilian Portuguese. Until the hiring is completed, the company is relying on automated tools with translation to catch content that breaches its rules.
