(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s penchant for making policy proposals on his nascent social media platform has made the site a must-follow for swaths of Wall Street, Washington and the media. The rise in use from the president-elect, though, hasn’t led to any meaningful boost in users.
Trump Media & Technology Corp.’s Truth Social notched 355,000 daily active users in November, up 3% from the prior month even after Trump won a second term as president, according to data from research firm Apptopia. Trump posted more than 200 times in the four weeks since the election, disclosing cabinet picks, threatening tariffs and chiding his opponents.
Still, traffic at Truth Social remains minuscule relative to its competitors, as many of the missives are quickly shared on rival social media platforms, most notably Elon Musk’s X. While the monthly gain did outstrip peers, the total user numbers still trail X’s by 400-times and Instagram’s Threads by a similar margin, the data show.
At the same time, user engagement, a metric used by advertisers to help determine rates, is paltry. The average person who opens the Truth Social app on a smartphone spent 4.4 minutes there per day in November, Apptopia data show. Over at X, users scroll for nearly 28 minutes a day.
The roughly 3% gain in worldwide daily active users on a monthly basis compared to a nearly 8% gain for September before a 13% decline in October as Trump ramped up a campaign against Kamala Harris, the data show. By comparison, X’s monthly users dipped by 4.7% in September before slightly ticking higher and dipping once again in November.
An outside spokesperson for Trump Media called the Apptopia data “cherry-picked,” but didn’t provide any additional user metrics. Apptopia is considered a reliable source for web traffic, and the company cites among its clients Visa Inc., Target Corp. and Microsoft Corp.
Trump Media shares fell 11% in November after more than doubling in the prior month as investors speculated a Trump win would bolster Truth Media’s profits. Revenue figures for November have not been disclosed. The company reported sales of $1 million in the third quarter and a loss of $19.2 million.
Over the first nine months of the year the company lost more than $363 million, a notable jump from a loss of $49 million over the same stretch in 2023, according to the filing. Sales for the period were just $2.6 million, dropping from $3.4 million a year earlier.
The company is still worth about $7.2 billion, making up a majority of Trump’s paper wealth, given he owns a roughly 53% stake worth some $3.8 billion. While he has stood by a pledge to not sell shares through Friday, the earliest day such a move would have been disclosed, his partners have made tidy profits.
Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, former contestants on Trump’s TV show The Apprentice who co-founded Trump Media, offloaded millions of shares in the company after restrictions that prevented selling were lifted. Patrick Orlando, whose ARC Global Investments II LLC sponsored the special-purpose acquisition company that merged with Trump Media to take it public, disclosed in November that he had sold the majority of his stock by the end of September.
The trio likely made at least $205 million based on the lowest price where shares traded during regular hours between when the restrictions were lifted and their filings. Those gains could’ve been far larger if they held on. The stock is up more than 170% from the low reached on Sept. 23.
--With assistance from Matt Turner.
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