An Indian alternative to Twitter Inc. is experiencing a surge in popularity after the U.S. microblogging site clashed with the country’s government, a sign of the growing political challenges for social media services.
The Koo app, which lets users send out tweet-like posts in English as well as seven Indian languages, shot to prominence after the San Francisco company got into a weekslong standoff with the Indian government over blocking certain content. Prominent officials — including Piyush Goyal, the minister of industry and commerce — defected to Koo and urged supporters to follow suit.
That led to a 20-fold explosion in daily users, overwhelming the servers and a 10-person engineering team at parent Bombinate Technologies Pvt. Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder and chief executive officer, said the Bangalore-based startup’s primary goal is not political at all, but rather to expand the reach of social media to a broader demographic.
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