Elon Musk is on top of the world ever since he proved that money really can buy almost anything in this world and purchased all of Twitter to take it private. Now the world’s richest man is taking time to trash former President Trump’s new social media as well as his own company, Twitter, at the same time.
Elon tweeted out, “Truth Social (terrible name) exists because Twitter censored free speech,” before following it up with a second tweet suggesting they should have named the new site “Trumpet” instead.
Of course, Elon Musk is not one to shy away from his own company’s shortcoming either, instead often choosing to call them out to pressure them to do better. He did the same here in another tweet where he pointed out that Truth Social is currently outperforming Twitter and TikTok on the Apple Store.
Of course, despite this noteworthy instance, Twitter and TikTok are still significantly larger than Trump’s platform overall. Twitter experiences an estimated 215 million daily users vs Truth Social’s less than half a million daily users as of Early April.
Despite Musk’s lauding of the new platform, his purchase of Twitter with a focus on promoting free speech and discourse is viewed as a huge threat to Truth Social, who had sold themselves as a free speech alternative to the much more popular social media site.
It also benefits the company that they will be run by Musk, the world’s most successful businessman and CEO, while Truth Social is run by career politician turned social media executive, former Rep. Devin Nunes. In fact, the shares of Digital World Acquisition, the special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) that intends to merge with Trump’s Truth Social, have taken a massive nosedive ever since Musk’s announcement, showing the market views the new Twitter as the Truth Social killer.
It’s understandable that prominent conservative leaders would be excited to keep and reengage their Twitter followers after years of censorship, especially since many of them boast as many followers as Truth Social has total users. Do you think Elon is right to take an early victory lap or is there a chance Truth Social could come back and become a new dominant social media company in our country and around the world?
