“Other than [Trump], what makes a platform compelling enough to come back over and over again? How is it different than Twitter and Parler?” said one Republican digital strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about different conservative apps.
After Twitter permanently suspended Trump, the self-proclaimed “Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters” vowed to turn the social media world upside down with a platform of his own. But well more than a year later, his platform has failed to prove it’s ready to cause the kind of disruption he imagined.
Worse, there’s not much public enthusiasm around the current venture. Top figures in Trumpworld are barely using the app — some give the verbal equivalent of a shrug when asked about it — and Trump himself has only posted one “Truth.”
It’s a lackluster rollout that threatens a long-held dream for some on the right: that an app bolstered by the former president’s star power could jumpstart a social media ecosystem with the same power to amplify conservative voices as AM talk radio or Fox News. And it illustrates one of the great hurdles that conservatives have failed to overcome when trying to launch social media empires of their own: Their followers are eager to argue with the opposition, not necessarily to mingle among the like-minded.
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