After former President Donald J. Trump was banned from Twitter in 2021, conservative entrepreneurs rushed to popularize social media alternatives tailored to him and his supporters.
Parler and Gab, Twitter-like sites, were popular among those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Next came Gettr, a social media app created by one of Trump's former advisers.
That crowded field has now narrowed, giving an edge to Truth Social, a platform owned by Mr. Trump's company and on which Mr. Trump has become its biggest attraction.
Truth Social recorded 1.5 million unique visitors in the U.S. in March, a 130% increase from the previous month, as its parent company began trading on the public market, according to data company SimilarWeb, which tracks web traffic. Although the number of visitors to the app is miniscule compared to mainstream social sites, it was 13 times the total recorded by Parler and Gettr.
Truth Social's closest competitor is Gab, which has been a hotbed of anti-Semitic and racist posts and attracted 246,000 unique visitors in March, according to Similarweb. (Gab founder Andrew Torba said Gab had about 6.5 million unique visitors in March, but disputed the number, saying he could not independently verify that number.) )
Truth Social's performance has a major impact on Trump's finances. When the app's parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, began trading on the Nasdaq last month, its valuation soared to $8 billion. Mr. Trump, who owns about 58% of the company's stock, suddenly became billions of dollars richer, giving him a financial lifeline as he faces hundreds of millions of dollars in legal costs related to civil and criminal cases. Ta.
But just because Truth Social is more popular than its competitors doesn't mean it has a viable business.
Since March, Trump Media's stock price has plummeted, reducing Trump's stake to about $2 billion. The company disclosed in its securities filing this month that its 2023 revenue was $4.1 million, all from advertising, and it had a loss of $58 million.
Truth Social outperformed its competitors primarily because their rivals were underperforming. Last year, Gettr was plunged into uncertainty after a major investor was arrested on fraud charges. Gab is not available in mainstream app stores, where it was banned in 2017 for allowing hate speech. And Parler is trying to make a comeback after temporarily shutting down a year ago amid a change in ownership.
Josephine Lukito, a social media expert at the University of Texas at Austin who studies Truth Social, said Truth Social is “the best of several unpopular or very niche platforms.” talk. “Even with Donald Trump, he’s not as popular as the mainstream platforms.”
Truth Social lags far behind the former Twitter company X, which Elon Musk acquired in 2022 and has since lifted restrictions on fringe political speech. Company X had nearly 115 million unique visitors in March, more than 75 times the traffic on Trump's platform. According to Similarweb.
Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said in a statement that Truth Social has a highly engaged audience of “millions of users” and thousands of new users join every day. Stated. She said the company has more than $200 million in the bank and no debt.
Trump media has not disclosed much about Truth Social's level of activity. In its corporate filings, the company omitted data that social media companies typically track closely, such as monthly or daily active user numbers. The company “does not rely on specific key performance indicators to make business or operational decisions” because these statistics facilitate “short-term decision-making,” according to one filing.
Still, Truth Social enjoys one crucial advantage over other right-wing apps. That's Mr. Trump.
After Twitter banned posts that incited violence on January 6, 2021, Trump was contacted by two former cast members of his reality show, The Apprentice. They proposed putting him at the center of a new platform that would not censor his posts. Trump agreed to a deal with Truth Social, acquiring a majority stake in the company.
But Truth Social wasn't the only platform trying to build an audience around Trump. In July 2021, Jason Miller, one of Trump's former campaign staff, launched Gettr, which was also similar to Twitter.
Competition was fierce. Gettr executives have closely tracked Truth Social's progress, and Miller, a former employee, said he once expressed concern that the app launched a direct messaging feature before Gettr did. Two members spoke.
But Miller's main focus was convincing Trump to use the site. On television, he said he had reserved the Gettr handle for the former president.
The charm attack worried Truth Social executives, according to documents provided to The New York Times by former employees. Daily logs kept by the site's leaders included multiple statements mentioning Miller's efforts to seduce Trump. (One entry also notes that “Melania really likes the name Truth Social.”)
Trump Media lawyers sent Miller a cease-and-desist letter in 2021, asking him to “cease recruiting President Trump,” citing Trump's contract with Truth Social, according to the filing.
Trump stuck with Truth Social and Gettr cowered. In February 2023, Mr. Miller left the company to join Mr. Trump's presidential campaign. A month later, federal prosecutors indicted Guo Wengui, one of Gettr's top investors, on charges of money laundering and fraud stemming from his various business activities.
Mr. Miller declined to comment. Gettr did not respond to requests for comment.
Parler also tried unsuccessfully to get Trump to post on the site. After the January 6th riot, Apple, Google, and Amazon removed the app from their stores, citing content moderation issues. Kanye West agreed to buy Parler in 2022, but the deal fell through and the site shut down last year.
Parler plans to relaunch next month, said Elise Pierotti, the company's chief marketing officer. For now, she said, the app is in a testing phase and isn't intended to bring in a lot of traffic.
Regarding Trump, Pilotti said, “If he's interested in our platform and wants to be on board, we're open to that and would welcome it.”
For now, Gab remains Truth Social's closest competitor. But the platform, founded in 2016, has faced problems over the years. In 2017, Google and Apple removed the app from their app stores due to the prevalence of hate speech.
According to Similarweb, Gab's average monthly traffic decreased by nearly 40% from 2022 to 2023. Gab's Toba said in his email that these numbers are false because Similarweb relies on data from third-party analytics providers that his app does not use. Tom Liu, vice president of SimilarWeb, said the company also worked with Internet service providers to collect data and apply a common methodology across the websites it evaluated.
Before Trump Media went public last month, there were signs that Truth Social's growth was stalling. The Stanford Internet Observatory estimates that the site had about 100,000 new users in the six months before its initial public offering, compared with about 250,000 users in the same period last year. But in March, the number of users on the site soared by more than 100,000.
As part of a publicly traded company, Truth Social also has other benefits, including public stock that can be used for acquisitions and hiring expansion. Trump Media said Tuesday it is nearing the launch of a video streaming service that will focus in part on “canceled content.”
Dr. Lukito said the platform has also outperformed its rivals in attracting other conservative candidates. According to her research, before the 2022 midterm elections, she had 54 Republican candidates posting on her Truth Social, compared to 37 on Gettr.
These numbers were paltry compared to X, which featured posts from 363 Republican candidates.