Prospects that Donald Trump's Truth Social will survive are growing bleak
By TOM BOGGIONI
PUBLISHED AUGUST 28, 2022 4:00AM (E
This illustration photo shows a person checking the app store on a smartphone for "Truth Social", with a photo of former US president Donald Trump on a computer screen in the background, in Los Angeles, October 20, 2021. (CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)
This article originally appeared on Raw Story
According to a report from the Washington Post, prospects that Donald Trump's Truth Social will survive are growing bleak with the company that had planned to take the social media platform public now suggesting that a probable bankruptcy is on the horizon.
As the report points out, Truth Social has not been paying for web-hosting fees to the point where attorneys are now involved, traffic is collapsing, the value of stock in the company is plunging and money is running out.
With the Post reporting, "Former president Donald Trump's Truth Social website is facing financial challenges as its traffic remains puny and the company that is scheduled to acquire it expresses fear that his legal troubles could lead to a decline in his popularity," WaPo's Drew Harwell wrote that the former president's legal problems have added another cloud of Truth Social's future.
In a filing this week, Digital World Acquisition, which planned to take Trump Media & Technology Group public, is now issuing warnings about what the future may bring.
"The company warned this week that its business could be damaged if Trump 'becomes less popular or there are further controversies that damage his credibility.' The company has seen its stock price plunge nearly 75 percent since its March peak and reported in a filing last week that it had lost $6.5 million in the first half of the year," the report states adding, "There are signs that the company's financial base has begun to erode. The Trump company stopped paying RightForge, a conservative web-hosting service, in March and now owes it more than $1 million, according to Fox Business, which first reported the dispute."
According to Harwell, "Trump's businesses have faced many similar payment battles over the years. In past SEC filings, Digital World has also noted that 'a number of companies that were associated with [Trump] have filed for bankruptcy' and that 'there can be no assurances that [Trump's media company] will not also become bankrupt.'"
"In fact, Digital World's filings have been consistently downbeat on the likelihood that Truth Social will be a success. Trump's company 'may never generate any operating revenues or ever achieve profitable operations,' it said in May, and if it is 'unsuccessful in addressing [its] risks, its business will most likely fail,'" the report adds while noting that traffic on the site has collapsed, with Harwell writing, "Trump, the site's most popular user, has fewer than 4 million followers, and the site's most active trending topics, including #DefundTheFBI, have shown only a few thousand people posting to them in recent days, data from the site shows. For comparison, Twitter says it has about 37 million people in the U.S. actively using the site every day... But in the days since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Truth Social's viewership has slowed, according to traffic estimates from Similarweb, an online analytics firm. Its U.S. audience has tumbled to about 300,000 views per day, down from nearly 1.5 million on the day of its launch."
This article originally appeared on Raw Story
According to a report from the Washington Post, prospects that Donald Trump's Truth Social will survive are growing bleak with the company that had planned to take the social media platform public now suggesting that a probable bankruptcy is on the horizon.
As the report points out, Truth Social has not been paying for web-hosting fees to the point where attorneys are now involved, traffic is collapsing, the value of stock in the company is plunging and money is running out.
With the Post reporting, "Former president Donald Trump's Truth Social website is facing financial challenges as its traffic remains puny and the company that is scheduled to acquire it expresses fear that his legal troubles could lead to a decline in his popularity," WaPo's Drew Harwell wrote that the former president's legal problems have added another cloud of Truth Social's future.
In a filing this week, Digital World Acquisition, which planned to take Trump Media & Technology Group public, is now issuing warnings about what the future may bring.
"The company warned this week that its business could be damaged if Trump 'becomes less popular or there are further controversies that damage his credibility.' The company has seen its stock price plunge nearly 75 percent since its March peak and reported in a filing last week that it had lost $6.5 million in the first half of the year," the report states adding, "There are signs that the company's financial base has begun to erode. The Trump company stopped paying RightForge, a conservative web-hosting service, in March and now owes it more than $1 million, according to Fox Business, which first reported the dispute."
According to Harwell, "Trump's businesses have faced many similar payment battles over the years. In past SEC filings, Digital World has also noted that 'a number of companies that were associated with [Trump] have filed for bankruptcy' and that 'there can be no assurances that [Trump's media company] will not also become bankrupt.'"
"In fact, Digital World's filings have been consistently downbeat on the likelihood that Truth Social will be a success. Trump's company 'may never generate any operating revenues or ever achieve profitable operations,' it said in May, and if it is 'unsuccessful in addressing [its] risks, its business will most likely fail,'" the report adds while noting that traffic on the site has collapsed, with Harwell writing, "Trump, the site's most popular user, has fewer than 4 million followers, and the site's most active trending topics, including #DefundTheFBI, have shown only a few thousand people posting to them in recent days, data from the site shows. For comparison, Twitter says it has about 37 million people in the U.S. actively using the site every day... But in the days since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Truth Social's viewership has slowed, according to traffic estimates from Similarweb, an online analytics firm. Its U.S. audience has tumbled to about 300,000 views per day, down from nearly 1.5 million on the day of its launch."
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