Trump’s Truth Social Still Plagued With Glitches Despite March 31 Goal To Be ‘Fully Operational’

Topline

Former President Donald Trump’s new Truth Social platform appears to have whiffed on a self-imposed March 31 deadline to be “fully operational,” with more than a million prospective users remaining stuck on a waiting list and interest appearing to wane.

What—him worry? Then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump plays to the crowd during a … [+] campaign rally at the American Airlines Center on September 14, 2015, in Dallas.

Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Key Facts

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMGT) CEO Devin Nunes said just before the app’s Presidents’ Day launch it would have a slow rollout, but he expected it would be fully operational in the U.S. by the end of March.

Top right-wing figures like Sean Hannity, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump Jr. were able to quickly join the platform after its launch, but the waiting list for the public to sign up has grown to more than 1.3 million.

The app was the most popular in the Apple App Store after its launch, but downloads have reportedly plummeted recently.

A strategist at mobile analytics company Sensor Tower told The Wrap estimated downloads have dropped 93% from the 872,000 recorded during launch week to now about 60,000 a week.

Trump has a Truth Social account but has not made any posts in weeks, confounding expectations that he would use the app to return to social media after being banned from every major platform in the wake of his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol.

TMGT did not return a request for comment from Forbes.

Crucial Quote

“We love you, and you are not just another number to us!” prospective users are told upon joining the waiting list.

Tangent

Users that have been able to access the app report it looks very similar in appearance to Twitter, with the equivalent for “tweets” being called “truths.”

Key Background

Trump in October announced the platform as a “rival to the liberal media consortium,” along with news that a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) planned to merge with TMGT to take Trump’s company public. The news caused DWAC’s share price to soar from around $10 a share to as high as $175 during a short-lived frenzy after Truth Social was announced. The stock has since slumped, falling from nearly $100 a share in early March to around $60 Friday morning. It’s not clear at this point when TMGT will go public, especially since DWAC is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission over reports it held talks with Trump before it went public last year.

What To Watch For

TMGT plans to move beyond Truth Social to create a broader media empire. The company announced in December it was partnering with Rumble in a “wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement” and entered “exclusive negotiations” to create a subscription-based streaming service called TMGT+.