Truth Social, Trump’s new social media platform, had a troubled launch that resulted in thousands of people being unable to sign up for several hours, and when they finally did, they were put on a waitlist. I was one of those would-be users, and despite it being more than 24 hours since getting on the waitlist, I’m still unable to use the platform.
The problematic launch may have been frustrating for users, but for investors, it was a good day. Truth Social became the top free app available on the Apple App Store, sending shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp, the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) behind Truth Social, surging on Tuesday, up over 25% in premarket trading on Tuesday.
“Digital World’s shares jumped 26% to $106.44 and were on track to open at levels last seen in October, days after Digital World announced a deal to publicly list Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the venture behind Truth Social,” Reuters reports. “Other stocks linked to Trump also advanced. Phunware, hired by Trump’s 2020 Presidential re-election campaign to build a phone app, climbed 17.9%. SPAC CF Acquisition Corp VI, which is taking video platform Rumble Inc public, added 5.4%.”
I suppose that’s good for the investors, but what about users? How much longer will bragging about the “massive demand” satisfy those who were expected to be able to take Truth Social for a spin by now? There isn’t even a web-based interface yet.
TMTG CEO Devin Nunes says it should be fully operational by the end of March.
The end of March?
With CPAC starting Thursday, it would have been ideal to have the platform up and fully operational for it. Instead, the platform is getting significant bad press because of the problems with the launch.
This was not how Trump’s return to social media was supposed to go. The platform was set to launch on Presidents’ Day — an obviously symbolic date — and thousands, if not millions of Trump supporters were to finally enjoy having Trump back on social media after he was booted off of Twitter, Facebook, and others after the Capitol Riot.
I maintain that TMTG was fully aware of Truth Social’s popularity based on the number of pre-orders it had. They should have expected that a large number of them would attempt to create accounts at the same moment. While other social media platforms have the ability to expand over time organically, Truth Social was always going to start big. Remember Google’s social media platform Google+? Maybe you don’t because it wasn’t successful, but they boasted large launch numbers as well. At least they had Google’s existing infrastructure behind it, so it didn’t crash Google’s servers.
Google’s social media platform was pure garbage, and there’s a reason why it failed, but technology problems were not a factor. Truth Social has a lot more to prove and a lot more to overcome than Google+ did. So far, it hasn’t met those challenges head-on with much success.
Truth Social needs to get up and running for users quickly. Trump deserved a better return to social media than this.
