Trump’s Truth Social app can’t beat Twitter, but it doesn’t have to

Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

After months of speculation, tribulation, and hype, former President Donald Trump launched his long-awaited social media platform on Monday. The app is available for download on the Apple App Store and sits at the top of Apple's download charts.

Truth Social is completely useless despite all of this excitement. After the app's Presidents Day launch, it suffered dozens of technical problems, from a 13-hour outage to users who were unable to make an account, to receiving the confirmation email that allows them to join. Even if you were able to get a usernames, it's likely you've been placed on a 300,000 person waiting list to start posting.

Judging from the rocky launch, it's hard to imagine that Facebook and Twitter are worried about the competition. The real goal of Trump's new app is to supplement the platforms rather than replace them. Like talk radio or Fox News before it, the new crop of conservative-focused social networks are trying to build an alternative, not a replacement, which makes the platform's success harder to measure.

It's easy to think that Trump is trying to replace the social media platform with something else. When the outgoing president was banned from social media, he vowed to start his own platform that would compete with the liberal media. Truth was positioned as an alternative for conservatives who felt their posts were taken down. The design of Truth Social, which is nearly indistinguishable from the others, only drives home the point further.

Truth Social marketed itself to investors in other ways. A slide deck presented to investors last November described Truth as an opportunity to unify the fragmented universe rather than competing with Facebook and Twitter for market share.

It is hard to believe that Truth will ever convince a hardened user to stop using the platform. It's easy to see why a Trump supporter would make an account. They are already a part of the Facebook groups, chats, Gettr communities, and subreddits. It is similar to talk radio, which did not replace traditional pop music programming but carved out a niche.

For competing companies in the alternative social media landscape, a successful platform may not be one that replaces Twitter but sets the standard for the community.

The new crop of right-leaning platforms doesn't seem too worried about internal competition. Kaelan Dorr, Gettr's head of marketing and global engagement, answered a question about Truth as their competitor, especially since the platform's CEO used to. It shouldn't be that there is only one warrior who will stand up against Big Tech.

According to Gettr's global communications director, the company has seen thousands of new sign ups since Truth was released.

Gettr is making space for a Truth takeover. In an interview with The New Yorker last month, Miller said that Gettr was moving more into a financial-services competitor and that Trump was moving more toward being the entertainment baron.

Even if Truth Social continues to grow, it is not clear how the platform will make money.