Posted on 03/11/2022 6:05:22 AM PST by redguyinabluestate
Radio host and TV commentator Dan Bongino built an army-sized following over the years on Twitter, with 2.4 million fans. In a few short weeks, he's attracted about a tenth of the same following on President Trump's nascent Truth Social platform.
But with millions fewer users and hundreds of thousands fewer followers, Bongino's Truth Social account — like those of scores of other conservative stars — is creating substantially more engagement on posts than his long-time audience on Twitter.
Thursday afforded the latest example. Bongino sent the same message out on both platforms to alert audience to his latest video podcast.
"Panic Breaks Out Over The Ukraine Bio-Labs Story," Bongino wrote on both platforms.
His giant Twitter audience created 554 likes and 185 retweets as of 7 p.m. EDT on Thursday. In contrast, his smaller sized audience on Truth Social tripled the engagement with 1,550 likes and 488 "re-truths."
"The traffic to the site and to the show is off the chart," Bongino told Just the News in an interview Thursday about Truth Social. "The engagement is extraordinary right now."
He also slammed mainstream media reports suggesting Truth Social was off to a slow start, saying such reports are disproven by engagement charts of its top users and belong in the same discredited trash heap of journalism as Russia collusion stories.
"A handful of liberal reporters get an account on Truth, can't attract any followers because no one wants to hear them, and then they report it isn't working," he said. "It's ridiculous journalism."
A survey of major figures who have both Truth Social and Twitter accounts found numerous examples of the Trump platform outperforming the engagement of the grand old daddy of 140-character tweets.
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) tweeted out this message two days ago on both platforms: "Gas prices just hit the highest level in history. They've been going up ever since Biden started his war on American energy production a year ago."
The Truth Social version of his post attracted 3,780 likes and 1,460 re-truths, while the Twitter version only got 1,132 and 411, respectively, after a day on the sites.
Likewise, when I tweeted out a story Thursday on 20 confirmed cases of voting illegalities and irregularities, the post attracted just 871 likes and 551 retweets on Twitter by 7 p.m., while the exact same post on Truth Social produced 1,480 likes and 1,030 re-truths. My Twitter account has 866,500 followers, while my Truth Social account has just 24,700.
Conservatives say the early Truth Social anecdotes seem to support two theories they have had for year: Twitter has been throttling or shadow-banning some content, while new platforms that allow free speech are booming with engagement from people tired of the censorship.
“Truth Social has exposed just how censored conservatives have been over the past few years online,” conservative activist Charlie Kirk said Thursday night.
Fox News Host Sean Hannity, one of the most popular figures on both Twitter and Truth Social, told Just the News his social media team keeps commenting about how quickly and dramatically the level of engagement has gone up on Trump's platform while the same team has given up mostly on Twitter because it is "clearly now dominated by the radical left."
With a 15-year head start, Twitter has about 396 million worldwide users, and about 37 million of them are active daily in the United States. The latter is down from more than 60 million in 2019. Truth Social currently boasts a micro-fraction of that audience.
While Trump's media team has not announced any numbers, Truth Social is believed to have fewer than 1 million users onboarded and more than double that total waiting to get on in the first few weeks of soft launch and testing. It plans to open up to all users by month's end. The pace of new accounts has been accelerating to several thousand an hour.
Devin Nunes, the former congressman who took over in January as CEO of the Trump Media and Technology Group that launched Truth Social, said the new platform is performing at a high engagement level that rivals or exceeds Twitter for most users even though it has massively fewer customers.
Truth Social users are "actually posting something simultaneously on both sites," he told the "Just the News" TV show on Monday. "And then what they're doing is that they're then comparing it after an hour or two hours, or five hours or a day, and you can see the reach that you're getting with just the small audience that we have so far on Truth Social. I mean, it's just incredible."
Nunes, whose interview with Just the News was one of his rare media appearances during the launch, said another key early success of Truth Social has been its ability to verify users are real people and stamp out bots.
"What you're seeing is not only do we have real users that are real people, we also don't have what you see on the other platforms," he said. "And that is bots running around everywhere, where somebody is controlling 50 bots, 100 bots, and they dirty up your timeline with garbage. You're not seeing that on our platform."
Nunes said the company is on track to open up the platform to all users by end of March.
"I've said this from day one that I took this job that we are going to let people on as we are ready to let people on so that our technology is both quality and reliable," he said. "And that's still the plan. So if I could put everybody on tomorrow, snap my fingers, we would do it. But our team is working around the clock, they continue to work around the clock, and we continue to let more and more people on every single hour."
Truth Social's rapid strides come as a new era of tech executives create platforms like Rumble to rival YouTube and CloutHub to rival Facebook with a stronger commitment to free speech and a promise to eschew the kind of censorship that has become extensive on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Prominent mainstream reporters are taking note of the new ecosystem.
When Oliver Stone's new movie "Ukraine on Fire" was removed from YouTube, Rumble took it on, and it quickly drew hundreds of thousands of viewers in a move that captured the attention of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Glenn Greenwald.
"This is why the platforms devoted to free speech are so vital — unless you want your world and the information you hear to be policed and controlled by Google executives, as seems to be true for many," Greenwald tweeted. "But for those who don't want that, this is crucial."
It’s ridiculous there is no Android app yet.
I signed up weeks ago and am still on the waitlist. Still at 567,530 on waitlist and it has been that number since the beginning. Not really impressed if they can’t get it together.
If they don’t get this waiting list thing fixed, people will give up. Like waiting on your food at a restaurant, eventually you just walk out.
PATIENCE is a VIRTUE...
Nunes said the company is on track to open up the platform to all users by end of March.
His giant Twitter audience created 554 likes and 185 retweets as of 7 p.m. EDT on Thursday. In contrast, his smaller sized audience on Truth Social tripled the engagement with 1,550 likes and 488 “re-truths.”
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Not a surprise at all!
I’ve never been on twitter but I would atribute that to two things;
First, you were hearing many many years ago how twitter (and other social media) would shadow-ban people. In effect, they would stifle the exposure of tweets and propagation of people they didn’t like. They can’t just censor people into the dark without making it obvious (except for extreme but false excused cases like Trump where they just fully ban).
Secondly, and more obvious, Twitter is controlled by trolls. Not only do they ban together, but they are supported by bot nets, and I suspect that twitter does the opposite of shadow-ban them. The lefty trolls and troll groups likely get priority. The only time conservatives or republicans get a lot of retweets is when they are being flamed
198,810 and holding.
Yep.
You’d think they’d turn on the app for Android first.
“It’s ridiculous there is no Android app yet.”
I am normally very protective of Trump. However, I am baffled by the rollout and delays. I know they are building a new platform that must be super robust and handle a million new subscribers in a short period of time.
Here is where the big BUT comes, it is well over billion dollar company (with a trillion dollar value in 10 years being possible). Building an Android App is not that hard even for a script kiddie. They should have hundreds if not thousands of the best coders working on making this the best platform using the latest technology.
It’s ridiculous there is no Android app yet.
I agree 100% Waiting.... Waiting... Waiting....
Nunes is not a tech head, he was a politician. Once again Trump selects the wrong person for the job. At the rate Nunes is moving it will be completely up and running by the 23rd century!
I disagree. The slow rollout is infuriating to those still on the waitlist (including myself) but it is being done for a very good reason. Users are only being added as the systems are getting built out to handle them. If everybody was let on all at once, the platform would have been overwhelmed, everything would have slowed to a crawl and the user experience would have been painfully terrible. (Parler was a good example of that.)
After seeing the app for myself as a co-worker of mine is now on it, I am very impressed and convinced that they are doing this right. The interface is beautiful and very Twitter-like and it's lightning fast.
I can't wait to get on it and over time, the platform will be made available on Android and PC as well. Many more features will get rolled out over time.
Some will argue that Social Truth should have waited until they were ready to host the hundred million people who want to sign up but that would have been 1-2 years away and we just don't have that luxury of time. The critical midterms are coming up and we need to have an alternative social media site up now - even if it is not yet robust enough to host everybody that wants to be on it today.
Remember that Facebook, Twitter, etc., did not start out on Day 1 with a hundred million users. We'll get there.
So let the anticipation build and see the platform grow.
For those on the waitlist, I recommend that you go to the App Store to ensure you have the latest version of the app. Your waitlist screen should be updated to show two green checkmarks, one for SMS Verified and one for Notifications Enabled. This way you will be notified when you are ready to be let in.
It is only a matter of time until they do the same on Truth Social.
The CEO is not the guy writing the code and plugging in the servers! I'm sure there are some top-notch technical people working under the hood. I've seen the app and it's first rate.
Can't wait to get on and start using it.
I can’t even find a log-in page on truth social right now. It says “download the app” and there’s only an app for iPhone.
It is only a matter of time until they do the same on Truth Social.
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Except for one difference. If all is really different, the leftist-troll-groups wont have top-down support on truth social. It might still be something to contend with, but at least the playing field will be more level
It'll come. I figure the operators are up to their ears in growing pains right now. Android audience has to be about the same size as IoS (apple) audience, so there is going to be another surge when android is opened. And then there is the desktop/browser too. Not sure where that one stands.
not looking good, worst rollout since Obamacare website.
I am convinced that many who naysay TRUMP SOCIAL are BOTS.
Their comments are identical to those on the DWAC comments on YahooFinancial.com.
It's even more ridiculous because I'm still waiting for my Apple app to be activated. I'm #204,263 on the "waiting list," so the app can't even be scaled up enough to handle the demand.
I don't know how they're measuring "conservatives' reach" but it sure isn't reaching me yet.
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