Greetings, fellow kids! We are here with the good news to share on all the socials you may have! The Truth has finally arrived, and we can thank our soon-to-be-reinstated president, Donald Trump, for this piece of news joy. Isn’t it great having him in charge again, almost?
Soon, the Monarch of Mar-a-Lago will once again be able to reach us all with his deep and kindly thinkings about The State of The World, and how it’s better when he runs everything.
He’s been gone an endless nine months since those mean corporate West Coast Silicon Valley tech baron billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and Satya Nadella kicked him off his lamestream social accounts. Inexplicable!
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Simply because cheering on and possibly plotting that whole unfortunate, not-really-a-treasonous-insurrection against the Constitution and the country. Unfair!
After all, isn’t reading his deep thinkings on Twitter something you miss in your morning (and lunchtime, and midafternoon, and dinnertime, and midnight) Doom Scroll?
Technically, fellow kids, this new company’s app will be called TRUTH Social, because writing a name in all-caps makes it more that way, right? And while the actual app and streaming video service aren’t quite here yet, they’re coming soon, sometime.
What is here, or will be, probably, soon after the exciting and bigly announcement this week, is the amazing and truthful social media giant that will also soon build the app and the streaming service and maybe also a streaming video news organization, eventually.
Going public first
Yes, there are some messy merger thingies that must be navigated, including technically being acquired by a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC for short) called Digital World Acquisition Corp.
DWAC the SPAC will take the Trump company public, presuming regulators and investors approve the paperwork, as well they should if they’re not captives of the Deep State and its Swampy Badness. Going public allows more suckers, er, investors to take part in the magic that will be TRUTH Social.
The company is “valued” at $850 million, with another $850 million in additional earnouts for being awesome, or something, though eager people with vision already bid up the stock of DWAC the SPAC 842% on Friday.
Until the money really starts flowing in, Trump Media & Technology Group will live off $293 million in investor capital being held in, um, trust by DWAC the SPAC. Possibly worth noting is that DWAC the SPAC is headed by a person who also heads a Chinese-controlled company, so there’s no possibility of complicated relationships with wealthy and connected people from autocratic and repressive U.S. rivals, something that has never happened with Our Glorious Leader before either.
As part of the merger process, all the people who put money into DWAC the SPAC must decide if they want to stay invested once it becomes a The Donald Company, with all the potential for lawsuits, bankruptcies, unpaid bills, corner-cutting, ethical lapses, and shameless grifting that regularly accompanied projects such as Trump University, Trump casinos, etc.
Basically, suckers, er, investors will be buying into the idea of building a social media app/service/news network, but don’t have any guarantees that it will actually arrive, or be any good, or find a substantial audience and advertisers, or succeed bigly, before they put their money up.
Hearteningly for those seeking more wisdom from the Big Fella than an occasional faxed letter or in-parson rant rally can provide, TMTG says a TRUTH Social app is already available for preorder in the iOS App Store, with a beta launch next month, and the whole thing coming to us lucky kids next quarter.
A streaming service, with an experienced reality-show producer already in charge, is also coming, to inevitably be called TMTG+. Plussing up a company name for your streaming service is some sweet marketing innovation, used widely in the always imaginative Hollywood scene.
One big investor, however, has already signaled a desire to spend their money elsewhere. Lame! Thankfully, enthusiastic others are bidding up the SPAC stock in true meme stock r/wallstreetbets fashion, so new marks, er, investors, no doubt will soon be enlisted.
Admittedly, it’s amusing that TRUTH Social is called TRUTH Social, and the posts are called Truths, given the more than 30,000 lies documented by the Washington Post during the Former Guy’s four years in office. He was always such an overachiever! Yes, sure, that seems like a lot, but hey, politicians lie all the time, and what happens to them? (Besides actually losing elections, which The Donald never did.)
Building apps and audiences is hard
There are some challenges ahead for TRUTH Social, though.
For one, building a compelling social media app isn’t easy, even for the man who should still be president except for those 7 million actual votes he didn’t get.
TRUTH Social does face a social media sector already overstuffed with apps touting the latest trends in social audio, or short-form video, or creator monetization, or immersive media, or co-viewing, or…something. Most are soon either dead, pivoting, or zombies.
Any new app must beat out all the giant social-media companies already out there. Worth noting, and a big differentiator!, none of them currently welcome The Donald on their premises (though the president also is suing to get back on Twitter even as he launches TRUTH).
Those big services already have hundreds of millions or even billions of regular users. They have reach. And revenue. And engagement. Also useful, they have lots of creators making most of their content at little cost to the company.
TRUTH will have to come up with all of that, enticing millions of people to rejoin Donald’s social world. Some (inexplicably!) may choose not to do that. Heck, some may never hear about TRUTH Social. Marketing is tough, and expensive, even with a Name-Brand Awesome Dude in charge.
Lots of competition
Even on social media’s right side (so-called because we’re always right, right?), it’s already crowded with One America News, Gab, Parler, Gettr, Blaze Network, Fox News Nation and others less notable. If audiences keep using those services, they may not have time to scoop the Truths dropped by the D Man.
It’s also worth noting those right-wing outlets have been perfectly content to have The Donald on their services as much as possible. Some have even invited him to invest. It’s been good for business. But they may be less charitable when The Donald becomes The Competition, trying to take their users, distributors, and advertisers.
Also, though the president hasn’t quite accepted that he’s not president anymore, he’s for the moment, technically, pending reinstatement that’s also technically not part of the Constitution, not president anymore. He’s less central to the conversation, even if the Republican Party keeps trying to reassure him otherwise.
Even many of The Donald’s partisans may peel off, especially if the unsuccessful one-term former president and ex-Democrat backer fails to make magic in the 2022 elections, or is physically, emotionally, or mentally unable to run another grueling national campaign in 2024 at age 78.
The Donald might also still have legal distractions, given all those lawsuits and criminal investigations that keep swirling around him. TRUTH Social, true to its heritage, already has a legal threat looming over possible misuse of source code.
Finally, it’s just possible that what a cranky 75-year-old loser has to say about the nation’s future in a difficult and complicated time won’t be quite as compelling to most social-media users going forward. Can he really post enough to keep TRUTH Social a vital source of bigly thinking? Without it, TRUTH Social could be in a difficult place financially over time.
Not that it will matter. By then, the Former Guy will have cashed a very large check from DWAC the SPAC suckers, er, investors, and headed off to the Mar-a-Lago patio to crash yet another wedding or funeral. Some things never change. And that, fellow kids, is the TRUTH.
