The special purpose acquisition vehicle (SPAC) - Digital World Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:DWAC) - which is a vehicle to take former President Donald Trump's social media endeavor, Truth Social, made its debut in October of last year. Initially, it had a huge surge in part to his rabid fan base and some investors thought that he could use his influence to get them on a new social media platform.
So far, this is simply not the case as Truth Social has simply not panned out. This is evident in its lackluster growth figures and the lack of posts on the platform from prominent members. Instead, there seems to be more momentum for Gettr which is another conservative-friendly, upstart social media platform that is being led by Trump's former communications chief, Jason Miller.
As a result, DWAC is plunging with a more than 50% loss from early March. The major reason is that its launch has been a fiasco with technical issues and the resignation of several executives on the tech and product side. Trump has also backed away from the company after earlier sending out press releases defending it. Another bad sign is after a couple of weeks at the top of the app store, it's now 35th.
Another difficulty is that many companies and brands don't want to join Truth Social, because it's seen as inherently political. They have tried to get out of this by running content from news organizations that is reposted similar to an RSS feed. While this is a clever workaround, it's certainly not consistent with its lofty early ambitions.
Social media businesses are about network effects. The one commonality among all the most successful ones is that they had a hockey stick-like growth curve. As more users join the network, it becomes more valuable which incentivizes more people to join. So far, this is not happening and it seems unlikely if President Trump is not willing to post on it himself.
Of course, for anyone familiar with his business career, this is not a surprise as most of his high-profile endeavors have failed with most of his success found in politics and entertainment.