LOS ANGELES (KNX) — Former President Donald Trump is back on social media, with a platform that he's in charge of. After being banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram last year, he took things into his own hands by working to create Truth Social, which launched Monday in the Apple app store.
Hours after launching, Truth Social was among the top free apps available, with more than 11,000 ratings and an average of 4.1 stars. Adam Rizzieri, a digital marketing expert with Agency Partner Interactive, joined KNX In Depth to discuss the tech glitches and long waitlist for the new app.
“I joined the beta group last week and I can say that [the app is] so far very intuitive. The buttons do what you expect them to do,” Rizzieri said, explaining that despite some technical difficulties, the app is overall performing well.
“A lot of early-state applications take a considerable amount of time to optimize them to make them function in a way that is logical and does make sense.”
After just over 24 hours on the market, Trump’s app has gained a waitlist of hundreds of thousands of people, according to the New York Post. When KNX reporter Marie Estrada attempted to download and create an account around 6:45 p.m. on Tuesday, she was told she was number 515,288 on the waitlist.
“The company plans to bring those people on the waitlist on board in the next 10 days or so. The indication is that by the end of March this app will really be at full steam,” Rizzieri said.
As the app rolls out, the question is now — how will it make money? Rizzieri said Truth Social is expected to eventually be a subscription-based app. It’s unclear if it will go the route of other social outlets, who monetize user data.
“So far we know that the company started about four months ago with just under $300 million dollars of cash on hand and they had a valuation that was close to one billion dollars,” Rizzieri said.
“Their valuation at the time of the start was $875 million dollars, which is about $875 million more than what most startups bring to the table on day one.”
Rizzieri said a wealth of capital and powerful leaders on the management team makes it clear that the app is around to stay, but only time will tell if it will succeed with users.
Currently Truth Social, which is described as a conservative-friendly version of Twitter, is only available in the United States.
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