Truth Social works to expand U.S. user base | Wilnesh News

Nearly two and a half years after its launch, Truth Social is struggling to maintain its smaller U.S. user base, according to new data from the Weibo platform launched by former President Trump’s media company.

According to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb, so far in May, daily visits to Truth Social in the United States have dropped by more than 21% from April and by more than 35% from March.

According to Sameweb, the site’s average monthly visits over the past year (just over 4 million from May 2023 to April 2024) have declined compared to the previous 12 months (May 2022 to April 2023) More than 39%.

The traffic decline comes despite Trump, the most famous Truth social user and the majority shareholder of its parent company. Trump Media — Coverage of his criminal trial and White House bid filled the national news.

Although the app saw a surge in traffic ahead of Trump Media’s initial public trading in March, Sameweb’s latest data shows those gains have been wiped out.

User and engagement data from Sameweb and two other data companies, collected and analyzed exclusively for CNBC, provide a glimpse into the development of Trump Media’s flagship product that the company itself has yet to provide.

The company claims not to track Key indicators Social media platforms have traditionally been used to monitor their performance. These include metrics such as the site’s active user accounts, daily and monthly visitor count, revenue per user, and ad impressions.

Trump Media said it believes tracking these statistics “may not be in the best interest of the company or its shareholders.” Recent submissions and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company also said that “any or certain key operational metrics may never be collected, monitored or reported.”

CNBC reached out to Trump Media for comment on the company’s findings and asked if it could provide any of its own data.

“Why would we comment on a fake news network that reports fake analysis?” the company said through a spokesperson.

But the new analysis could be a warning sign for Trump Media, whose business depends heavily on the growth of its user base.

“If you can’t prove that you have a large, active, engaged, and growing audience, I don’t see how you can create a successful ad-supported social media business,” said David Carr, Insights, News and Research Editor at Similarweb (David Carr) said.

Trump Media Completely dependent on advertising sales its revenue, and disclosed in SEC filings that declining user engagement could hurt Truth Social’s business by making it less attractive to advertisers.

The data firm’s findings could also reinforce Wall Street analysts’ view of the company as a “meme stock” whose sky-high market capitalization has nothing to do with the fundamentals of its business.

“We basically see nothing in these numerical indicators that explains why valuations are so high,” Carr said.

Trump Media reported Tuesday a first-quarter net loss of nearly $328 million on revenue of about $771,000, most of which came from advertising.

Still, the company’s market capitalization was just over $8 billion as of Friday.

The stock closed Friday at $45.81 a share, roughly in the middle of the broad range that TMTG stock has seen since the company went public in March, from a low of around $22 a share to a high of around $70.

Three different data companies told CNBC that Truth Social’s number of monthly active users in the United States dropped significantly in the final months of 2023.

But traffic to the platform rebounded in the first quarter of the year as Trump Media moved closer to a deal that would allow the platform to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker DJT.

That meme-induced craze Long-term growth in traffic seems unlikely: For example, in the four weeks ending May 19, daily active users of Truth Social in the U.S. were down 19.7% from the same period last year, according to Sametimeweb.

GWS Magnify said Truth Social also faces two major hurdles in building an active user base.

The first is the issue of retention. Truth Social users spend an average of less than two days a week on the site, lagging behind apps like Facebook, X, TikTok, Reddit and Pinterest.

Truth Social users also spend less time engaging on the platform than users of other social media networks. The vast majority of Truth Social users (87%) also use Facebook. Another 51% are also on X, according to GWS Magnify.

“Truth Social users access the app much less frequently and spend much less time per session than other social media platforms,” ​​CEO Dr. Paul Carter told CNBC in an email. .

“This will have a greater impact on the prospects for truth than any media attention,” Carter said.

He added that future declines in Truth Social’s numbers “will be due to the platform’s failure to engage users in the way that the most successful social media companies, especially TikTok, have mastered.”

The second problem is that Truth Social doesn’t offer anything to differentiate itself from the larger microblogging sites, especially X, which is very similar.

According to its latest financial report, Trump Media said it is focused on adding new features to Truth Social, including live television.

But for now, Truth Social’s most unique feature is Trump himself, who regularly uses the app and occasionally makes news with his posts.

Despite overwhelming national media coverage of Trump’s criminal trial and his presidential campaign Joe Biden says Trump’s presence on Truth Social isn’t enough to lure users away from his rival.