underperforming
Trump's Truth Social is the 36th most popular social networking app on the Apple App Store
Former President Donald Trump's social media app has so far failed to become a major competitor to established social networks, The Daily Beast reported Monday.
The Beast's article, which was published at 4:46 a.m., said Trump's Truth Social was the 28th most popular social networking app on the Apple App Store, but at 11:51 a.m., it was sitting in 36th place.
The app, which had a rocky release in late February, initially shot to the top of the Apple App Store social networking charts but has since sunk below "more obscure social networks like 'Wizz,' 'BeReal,' and 'Bloomer-random video chat,'" per the Beast.
Dating apps Plenty of Fish (#17) and BLK – Dating for Black Singles (#25) are also outperforming Truth Social, which just barely edged out LGBT dating app Grindr (#39).
The top five spots are held by Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord. The App Store ranks popular social networks Twitter and Instagram in the "News" and "Photo & Video" categories, respectively.
The Beast also notes that downloads of Truth Social have nosedived from a peak of 170,000 per day to less than 8,000 and that the app's cadre of daily active users is vanishingly small — just over 500,000 compared to Twitter's 217 million.
This reporter remains 476,784th on the Truth Social waiting list.
Trump touted Truth Social, basically a Twitter clone with "truths" instead of "tweets," as a platform friendly to free speech, but it relies on the same auto-moderation software used by Facebook and Twitter. The app also features terms of service that allow the removal of any content that "annoy[s]" Trump personally.