Let’s talk about two billionaires nursing love-hate relationships with Twitter—Elon Musk and Donald Trump—and their differing approaches to striking back at the thing they simultaneously adore and detest. Spoiler alert: The one seems to have the better plan.

Trump and Musk have enjoyed this platform since the beginning. They’re controversial figures who think mainstream media obstructs their message and often unfairly portrays them in a negative light. They can, however, bypass these barriers and send their messages directly to their supporters and fans via Twitter. They are many. They have both had over 80 million Twitter followers. Collectively, they’ve sent over 72,000 tweets.

The reason both men are disliking Twitter is the same. They see Twitter as acting too much like media’s old guard, limiting free speech. Thought this hasn’t stopped them from breaking Twitter’s rules and behaving badly, and both have faced consequences for their actions. After a tweet that helped to spark the insurrection at U.S. Capitol, Trump was banned from Twitter in January 2020 Musk’s 2018 tweet suggesting he was going to make Tesla private is still partially blocked by the SEC. Musk claims that it was an amusing joke about marijuana culture. Musk stated, in addition, that he wanted Twitter to be decentralized and open up its algorithm, giving users more choice about what they see on their feed.

Now, Musk and Trump seem equally eager to get back at Twitter, and here’s where their similarities end. They’re going about it entirely differently. Musk has amassed a $3.7 billion stake in Twitter, making him its largest shareholder, a position that’ll instantly make the company take him more seriously. Trump, meanwhile, has launched his own social media app, Truth Social, marketed as a would-be competitor/alternative to Twitter. However, it is not able to launch as well as it launched.

“One thing Twitter has is a very engaged, active and loyal user base, which was hard to assemble,” says Deutsche Bank analyst Benjamin Black. “Trying to replicate it will be a very, very expensive endeavor.”

It is expensive and may not be possible. Truth Social opened its doors to users last month. It has received over 1,000,000 downloads. But it has relied on an opaque waitlist system with many users saying they continue to receive a notification that they’re in a line almost a million people long.

If you’ve already made to Truth Social, you know the place looks like a ghost town. There’s a dearth of activity and engaged conversation. For proof, look no further than Trump’s own account. “Get Ready! Your favorite President will see you soon!” he posted in February. He hasn’t said a thing anything since. Trump now has 855k followers on Truth Social. This is roughly 1 percent of his previous Twitter audience.

If Trump really wants to stick it to Twitter, this isn’t a promising start.

Musk could have better fortune. He doesn’t need to build anything from scratch, plunging millions into …read more

Source:: Social Media Explorer

Author: Aaron