Donald Trump launched Truth Social on February 21st, 2022. One month later, the app appears to be on life support. We dig into the numbers.
On January 8th, 2021, former president of the United States Donald Trump was banned from Twitter. Citing the risk that Trump would leverage their platform to incite further violence, Twitter’s ban was a response to the role he played in the January 6 riot, in which pro-Trump protestors stormed the United States Capitol Building in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Just nine months later, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) went live. They issued a press release announcing the launch of Truth Social in the first quarter of 2022. Its aim, they said, was to rival “the liberal media consortium” and fight back against “the ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley.”
When the app officially hit the App Store in late February, it dominated the United States’ top charts and quickly generated hundreds of thousands of downloads. Since then, things have changed drastically. Indeed, with downloads now faltering, Trump neglecting to use his own profile, and a media environment focused on more urgent matters, the app’s future hangs in the balance. So, we leveraged our app intelligence solutions, to take a look at the numbers.
Here’s what we cover (click the links below to jump to the relevant sections):
- What Is Truth Social?
- Analysis of Truth Social’s Performance
- Downloads (February 21st, 2022 - March 27th, 2022)
- Top Chart Rankings (February 21st, 2022 - March 27th, 2022)
- Final Thoughts
What Is Truth Social?
Quickly, before we dive into the numbers, Truth Social is a social media platform that was launched by former president of the United States Donald Trump. It’s more or less akin to Twitter in that it’s a microblogging service on which users post and interact via messages known as “Truths” (think “Tweets,” but imbued with more irony).
Demographically, it’s composed primarily of the “MAGA”-wing of the Republican Party. However, the folks over at Truth Social describe their platform a little differently. Here’s how they see things: “Truth Social is America's ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.”
Currently, Truth Social is available for iOS device users only. An Android version of the app is expected in the coming months, although no release date has been made public.
Analysis of Truth Social’s Performance
Downloads (February 21st, 2022 - March 27th, 2022)
Above you’ll find daily downloads for the iOS version of Truth Social. In particular, this chart depicts downloads in the United States (the only country where the app is available) between February 21st and March 27th, 2022.
As noted earlier, Truth Social came out swinging. Over the first six days of the app’s existence it had already generated over 500,000 downloads. However, things soon took a turn for the worse. On February 27th, the app dipped below 50,000 daily downloads for the first time. Now, things are even more dire — Truth Social has gone nine straight days without generating more than 5,000 daily downloads.
As it stands, Truth Social has raked together 922,979 total downloads. That’s not bad, but clearly many of those downloads were front-loaded. It also remains to be seen how many will become active users.
Top Chart Rankings (February 21st, 2022 - March 27th, 2022)
The top chart rankings tell a similar story. Above, you’ll find Truth Social’s daily U.S. rankings in the ‘Social Networking’ genre of the App Store.
Trump’s Twitter-killer briefly held the top spot, surpassing the likes of Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord on the way up:
Once again, however, things took a turn shortly thereafter. While Truth Social hovered around the number 10 spot for about 17 days, it’s now trending outside of the top 30 ‘Social Networking’ apps.
As for overall rankings, Truth Social briefly held the top spot, but is no longer ranked.
Final Thoughts
Truth be told, Truth Social has a real shot at making it. In just over one month since its launch, the app has been downloaded nearly one million times. Front-loaded or not, if even 25% of those users stick to the platform, that’s not a bad start.
Moreover, while downloads have been dwindling, Truth Social has plenty of room to grow. Indeed, right now, it’s an iOS-only app that cannot be accessed outside of the United States. By releasing an Android version of the app, followed by a desktop version and international accessibility, Truth Social can build a much broader cross-platform user base.
Of course, whether this will be enough to meaningfully rival the “liberal media consortium” and “Big Tech” remains to be seen.
