Image: © MMollaretti/Stock.adobe.com
The former US president continues to use Truth Social as his social network of choice ahead of locking horns with Joe Biden in the presidential election this November.
Stock market debuts have been rare enough for a while now, especially for social media companies, but Reddit broke this streak last week with an IPO that valued the online forum at around $6.5bn. Now, less than a week later, Donald Trump’s Truth Social has become the second social media firm to float on the market this year – at a higher valuation while at it.
Publicly trading on the Nasdaq starting today (26 March), Truth Social is a social network founded by the former US president after he was banned from major platforms including Facebook and Twitter following his alleged role in inciting the riots at the US Capitol in early 2021.
By October 2022, the app had made it onto the Google Play Store allowing it to be accessed from devices across the US. And even though his Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) accounts were reinstated last year, Trump continues to use Truth Social as his platform of choice.
Last week, parent company Trump Media and Technology Group Corp was acquired by Nasdaq-listed Digital World Acquisition in preparation for the float. According to reports, many of the latter’s investors were not the traditional, professional kind but small-time betters who support Trump or hope to make some money out of the hype created around the app.
Politics aside, this bet may not be fiscally wise. New filings unearthed in November last year show that Truth Social has been in a financial nosedive since it was founded.
Documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission at the time showed that the Facebook and X competitor lost nearly $23m in the first half of 2023. It has since been reported that Trump Media lost $49m in the first nine months of last year.
But investors potentially losing out is probably of no consequence to Trump in the short term. The US presidential candidate stands to make billions out of the IPO – which reportedly values Truth Social at about $6.8bn. Trump is engulfed in multiple, expensive legal battles – including four criminal indictments – in the lead up to the presidential election this November.
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