[ad_1]
CNN
—
When he’s not raising horses or working on construction sites, 28-year-old Nick Martsink says he spends “a lot” of his time on Truth Social, the social media platform started by Donald Trump.
Similarly, Bree Duke, a retiree from northwest Georgia, said she regularly checks President Trump’s frequent posts called “The Truth.”
“I love it,” Duke told CNN. “It’s on TV, it’s on mobile phones.”
Mr. Miltsink and Mr. Duke attended Mr. Trump’s recent rally in Rome, Georgia, where regular Truth Social users easily gathered and shared glowing reviews of the app. However, outside of his MAGA movement, the social media site has struggled to find a wider audience. There has been a mass exodus of users and traffic has plummeted. As of November, there were approximately 860,000 accounts active on the site, a small difference compared to mainstream platforms.
Nevertheless, on Friday, Digital World Acquisition Corporation approved a lucrative merger with Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Truth Social. It’s a merger expected to yield a multibillion-dollar windfall for the former president amid mounting legal troubles and a judgment at stake. his business empire, personal wealth, and campaign finances. However, there is no immediate relief as President Trump is restricted from selling his stock holdings for six months.
It’s a significant milestone for the social media site and for President Trump, paving the way for the former real estate mogul’s return to Wall Street. The company will trade under the ticker DJT and will feature Trump’s initials alongside some of the world’s most iconic brands and companies, just as Trump Tower once did.
For President Trump, an active and adversarial presence on Twitter helped chart his path to the presidency, but the social media site has become a new megaphone for his unvarnished opinions. His most ardent supporters, political reporters, and even his own staff and advisers rely on the site as a window into his latest thinking, and he uses it dozens of times a day. Shared in this post.
But as President Trump’s ascension as social media king enters its third year, the app’s long-term viability and purpose remain uncertain. Truth Social is not a serious threat to compete with, let alone Eclipse, X, Facebook, or YouTube. It is not among the 100 most downloaded social media applications in the Apple App Store. Nor has it established itself as a conservative alternative to them. Trump Media executives warned last year that the company was at risk of bankruptcy if it didn’t merge, and most analysts are skeptical of its current valuation of more than $6 billion.
“This is grossly overvalued,” Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida, told CNN this week. “It qualifies as a meme stock whose price has diverged from its fundamental value.”
Rather, this extremely high rating appears to be closely related to President Trump’s attempt at a political comeback. But Truth Social has not proven that it can survive, let alone thrive, unless the nation’s attention is focused on the site’s most famous users.
“Truth Social’s influence is largely, if not entirely, driven by the popularity of Donald Trump,” said Josephine Lukito, who studies the intersection of politics and social media at the University of Texas at Austin. “Without him, I don’t think there’s a viable path forward.”
Truth Social was launched in early 2022, a year after Twitter and Facebook, now known as X, banned Trump from his accounts for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both platforms have since reinstated Trump’s accounts, but Trump has been posting almost exclusively on social.
Trump recently told an audience in South Carolina that he bought his app’s name from “some guy” for $2,100.
“I would have paid millions of dollars,” Trump told the audience.
Some conservatives, looking for an alternative to mainstream social media sites seen as hostile to their viewpoints, seemed initially willing to embrace Truth Social. A 2021 poll found that three out of five Republicans Plan to use the new site.
“Get ready!” Trump wrote in his first Truth Social post. “You’ll soon meet your favorite president.”
However, the hype for this app exceeded the actual usage. A Pew Research study found that three months after its launch, only 2% of Americans reported using Truth Social regularly to get their news, compared to others like Gettr and Rumble. Similar to niche conservative social media alternatives.
Activity on the app has sharply declined since its initial peak. The site’s monthly active users on iOS and Android devices are down 39% year-over-year, according to Similar Web data shared with CNN earlier this month. During this period, visits to the site on mobile and desktop also plummeted by nearly 29%.
The app itself is a bit clunky and not without technical issues. Things seemed to go down when President Trump promised to provide live commentary during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
CNN has reached out to Truth Social for comment through an email address on its website. My email has been returned.
Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman and CEO of Trump Media, said in a statement last month after U.S. regulators cleared the merger that “going forward, there will be no voice outside of Big Tech’s stifling stranglehold.” We aim to accelerate efforts to build the Freedom Highway of the United States.”
True to his own words, Trump claims that Truth Social is “on fire.” He regularly promotes the app at rallies and interviews. For example, President Trump recently recounted to his audience his posts supporting IVF treatment after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling halted access to IVF services at some clinics in the state. , featured Truth Social.
“The ultimate joy in life is having a beautiful, healthy, wonderful baby,” Trump said, adding: Has anyone been tuning in lately? hot. Truth Social is hot. ”
Many Republican politicians and conservatives either don’t participate in Truth Social or post infrequently. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s last post was in July 2022. Popular conservative podcast hosts Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, and Glenn Beck do not appear to have active accounts. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott only recently joined Truth Social after his name was floated as a running mate for Trump.
Even those who have embraced Truth Social continue to operate on competing platforms, including those in President Trump’s inner circle.
“His surrogates are very active on said Matt Terrill, who served as his chief of staff. “A lot of people see it as a place to get their news.”
For his supporters, the venture is further evidence of Mr. Trump’s business acumen, the reputation he built during his career in real estate and as a reality TV personality.
Paul Leslie, a writer who attended Trump’s rally in Georgia, told CNN: “This is great, because the fact that we’re having this conversation right now is completely moral. That’s why it’s so impressive.” “When you create your own social media platform, people even talk about the fact that, ‘Oh, you’re not on Twitter.’ It’s just another source of coverage, and as anyone can see, Donald There is no public relations genius more impressive than Trump.”
Trump posts dozens of times each day on Truth Social, offering a flurry of commentary on his legal issues, sharing favorable polling numbers, responding to negative press coverage, and announcing the day’s Political debates will be considered.
President Trump first commented on former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s withdrawal from the race on Truth Social.
On Friday alone, President Trump attacked a judge and a state attorney general in one of his lawsuits, expressed support for Cuban protesters, endorsed an Arizona Senate candidate, and spoke directly to camera8. He shared a video of the book and suggested that he had enough funds to cover the incident. A $464 million civil fraud judgment in New York – a potentially troubling admission for his legal team.
These posts echo President Trump’s past social media usage and style. He often posts in all caps, but that only scratches the surface. On Site
“It’s safe to say that truth social has yet to break into the mainstream,” said Joshua Tucker, co-director of New York University’s Center on Social Media and Politics. “This is where a small group of conservatives gather and President Trump speaks to some of his supporters.”
For some supporters, it’s a feature, not a bug.
“I definitely think it’s a good thing for him to quit Twitter,” Miltsink said at a rally in Georgia. “There are a lot of Democrats on Twitter.”
Kurt Holtzclaw, 20, a construction worker and Trump supporter, has had to sift through a significant amount of true social content from conspiratorial accounts that might be blocked on other platforms. he admitted.
“I like to get information from a variety of sources,” Holtzclaw said. “But I want to know his point of view.”
Where Truth Social succeeded, it primarily benefited one person: Trump. According to Lukito, a professor at the University of Texas, as former President Trump re-emerged as a front-runner for the Republican nomination, Truth Social became significantly more popular with news coverage from reporters mining the site for thoughts about Trump’s campaign. It is said that it has started to be taken up. This trend has further accelerated since Trump was nominated as the Republican nominee.
“One of the misconceptions is that what matters is how big Twitter is going to be compared to Twitter, or how much money Twitter is making,” Lukito said. “The reality is he’s winning because he’s been able to leverage media coverage well through Truth Social. Most people find out about it because they see it in the media, not because they’re on the platform. .”
President Trump recently acknowledged the phenomenon after Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at the former president’s comments about his performance hosting the Academy Awards.
“He ends up reading my truth. E (sic) said this guy is even more stupid than I thought,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It went viral. Now it’s talked about all over the world, and all he had to do was keep his mouth shut.”
Still, some of Mr. Trump’s supporters are looking forward to the day when his posts reach a broader audience.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said at a recent Trump rally, “Mr. Trump would tweet, and, well, people would see it and be offended.” “I’m telling you, I’ll give you any good old Trump tweet. Look, you can find him on his Truth Social. You know where he is.”
[ad_2]
Source link
