When Donald Trump’s Truth Social launched last month, it was nothing short of a mess, and naturally, the mainstream media has been mocking the new social media platform ever since.
“Former President Trump’s platform Truth Social has made little impact on the social media market roughly two weeks after launching on the Apple app store, with hundreds of thousands of potential users stuck on a lengthy waitlist,” The Hill reported this week.
The Daily Beast said that Truth Social is “currently looking less like a success and more like an embarrassing dud,” citing reports that Trump is “furious” about the troubled launched and asking why Truth Social isn’t dominating the competition.
While I can’t argue that Truth Social’s launch went off perfectly, despite the problems it experienced, it may have already proven itself a success where it counts.
According to conservative pundit Dan Bongino, despite having a larger audience on Twitter, his posts on Truth Social are getting significantly more reach and engagement. On Thursday, Bongino sent identical messages on both platforms about his latest video podcast, and “his giant Twitter audience created 554 likes and 185 retweets as of 7 p.m. EDT on Thursday. In contrast, his smaller sized audience on Truth Social tripled the engagement with 1,550 likes and 488 ‘re-truths.'”
“The traffic to the site and to the show is off the chart,” Bongino told Just the News. “The engagement is extraordinary right now.”
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) has seen a similar trend. Earlier this week, he tweeted identical messages on Twitter and Truth Social: “Gas prices just hit the highest level in history. They’ve been going up ever since Biden started his war on American energy production a year ago.”
“The Truth Social version of his post attracted 3,780 likes and 1,460 re-truths, while the Twitter version only got 1,132 and 411, respectively, after a day on the sites,” Just The News reported.
Bongino also dismisses reports that Truth Social is off to a slow start.
“A handful of liberal reporters get an account on Truth, can’t attract any followers because no one wants to hear them, and then they report it isn’t working,” Bongino said. “It’s ridiculous journalism.”
Former Congressman Devin Nunes, the CEO of the Trump Media and Technology Group, which launched Truth Social, lauded the platform’s high engagement level compared to Twitter, and how many users are crossposting on Twitter and Truth Social and seeing the same differences in reach and engagement.
This means that despite having a smaller audience at this point, Truth Social users are getting more of what’s important. So, when the site is fully open at the end of March, as is the plan, it means things will only get better.
Truth Social still has a ways to go to compete on a level playing field. For example, as of Friday, there is still no web-based interface, messages within the app are still not functional, and there’s no process or procedure within the app to request verification—a critical need for people (like me) in media.
Still, despite the negative press, Truth Social has already proven what many on the right have long suspected: Twitter is throttling and shadow-banning conservative users and their content. Truth Social has already achieved success if a fraction of the audience on Truth Social can generate more reach and engagement than on Twitter.
