Truth Social has a retention problem, analysis suggests

Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social has a problem with retaining users, a market data and analysis consultancy has said.

Truth Social launched in February 2022, about a year after the former president was banned from X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook for posts about the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. While he has since been reinstated to the platforms, he opts to use Truth Social. The app has vastly lower numbers of active users in comparison to Reddit and X, which have been around for longer.

According to an analysis by GWS Magnify, Truth Social is failing to convert people into regular users of the platform. It found that 22 percent of Truth Social users had used the app in the last seven days at the time of analysis compared to 57 percent of X users. It found that 49 percent of Truth Social users had not used the app for at least 61 days, compared to 22 percent of X users. The analysis is based on the number of active mobile device users i.e. users who accessed the Truth Social app at least once in a given month, as opposed to the total number of accounts or downloads.

It found that the average Truth Social users access the platform less than two days a week while Facebook users access the app the most at 4.6 days a week.

However, it also said that the number of active users has increased from 500,000 in December 2023 to 1.4 million in March 2024.

The analysis shed light on the demography of Truth Social users. It found that 57 percent of active users are men while 43 percent are women. It also found that 65 percent of app users are over the age of 55 and 77 percent are white.

Newsweek contacted Truth Social’s parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) by email outside of business hours to comment on this story.

Shares of TMTG fell on Tuesday following the release of the company’s first-quarter earnings report on Monday.

The company reported a net loss of $327.6 million for the first quarter of 2024. This loss was primarily attributed to non-cash expenses related to the company’s recent merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC)​​.

TMTG posted a net loss of $210,300 the year before.

The stock was down 11.64 percent at 10:25 a.m. ET on Tuesday, after closing Monday at $48.38. According to the latest available Google Finance data, the stock is $43.20 per share as of Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a regulatory filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission in April revealed that Truth Social made just over $4.1 million in revenue in its last operating year, but racked up $58.2 million in costs. It showed an operating loss of almost $16 million.

Speaking to Newsweek, Todd Landman, a professor of political science at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham in the U.K. said Truth Social risks being “precarious financially” because of its small volume of users.

“The success of any online platform rests on the volume of users,” he said. “Truth Social has not built a sufficiently large volume of users to date, with recent indications of a drop in that volume. The first quarter income and expenditure reporting shows that there has been a net loss in its performance. Its stock price has risen since its low point, but unless the platform retains current users and attracts new users, it will continue to be precarious financially.”