Agbaraoluwa Adedeji
The creators of the Twitter alternative app, Koo (X), have announced intentions to cease operations four years after its initial launch. Co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka made the announcement on Wednesday, citing challenges in fundraising and a negative market outlook.Koo was originally launched in India in 2020 and expanded to Nigeria in 2021 amidst the Nigerian government’s ban on Twitter (X). It gained favor with the Nigerian government, leading to all official government handles being transferred to the platform at that time.However, the fascination with Koo was short-lived, as many Nigerians continued using Twitter until the ban was eventually lifted, prompting the government’s social media managers to revert to Twitter.Reasons for Koo’s shutdownIn a LinkedIn post announcing the closure of Koo, Radhakrishna and Bidawatka mentioned that despite efforts to forge partnerships with various tech and media firms to sustain the company, these initiatives ultimately proved unsuccessful.”We regret to inform the public that we will be discontinuing our service. Despite exploring partnerships with several large internet companies, conglomerates, and media houses, these discussions did not yield the desired outcome.”Many potential partners were hesitant to engage with the unpredictable nature of user-generated content typical of social media platforms. Additionally, a few companies shifted priorities abruptly just before finalizing agreements.”While we aimed to sustain the app, the high costs associated with technology services required to operate a social media platform have led us to make this difficult decision,” the founders explained.They acknowledged that achieving their vision for Koo would require five to six years of aggressive, long-term, and patient capital, but the necessary funding did not materialize.Key Points to Note:Koo’s decline in Nigeria began in 2022 when government officials who had migrated to the platform started returning to Twitter following the lifting of the ban. Former President Muhammadu Buhari and other officials had joined Koo in June 2021 after the Twitter ban, but ceased posting on the platform thereafter. For example, the last update on the verified official Nigerian Government handle @nigeriagov, with 73,500 followers, was on February 3rd, 2022.Koo officially launched in Nigeria in August 2021, two months after the Nigerian government’s Twitter ban. The app positioned itself as a substitute for Twitter, adopting a similar design format to the Bluebird app, but with its distinctive yellow color scheme.