Trump’s Truth Social soft launches on IOS

Former US President Donal Trump’s new social media venture, Truth Social, has soft launched on the IOS Apple store in the US.

The Truth Social app landed early on Monday morning and was automatically downloaded to the devices of a limited number of subscribers who had pre-ordered the app.

Trump began working on the new social media network after being banned from platforms Twitter and Facebook following the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters last January.

Trump is hoping that Truth Social will attract the millions who followed him on Twitter as he hints at a third presidential run.

The site, which is said to resemble Twitter, is not expected to be open to the wider public until next month and is yet to launch on Google Play which the company assured was ‘coming soon’.

The fledgling social media site is also only currently available to US users –  although on its website Truth Social assures the rest of the globe with the following message:

“We are working hard to make it available in your country. When Truth Social becomes available for you, we’ll make an announcement. Stay tuned!”

It has been reported that users keen to join the platform have had trouble registering for an account or were added to a waiting list.

The venture behind the fledgling social media platform Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) is led by former Republican politician and businessman Devin Nunes.

In December TechInformed reported that Truth Social has received $1bn in backing from a group of anonymous investors ahead of a planned stock market listing and has partnered with a ‘blank cheque’ company called Digital World Acquisition.

Other alternative so-called ‘free speech’ social media apps – which ultimately have to comply by the same rules and regulations as Twitter and other platforms – include American Conservative site Gettr (which has gained 4.5m users since its launch last year), far-right platform Parler (which accrued just under 1m followers since its launch in 2018) and Canadian-based video site Rumble, which launched nine years ago and now claims to attract 32 million users per month.

By comparison, Twitter has about 396m active users while YouTube has more than 2 billion.