The CEO of a media company founded by former President Donald Trump had an interesting take on why Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk is taking a stake in and joining the board of directors of Twitter Inc TWTR.
What Happened: Devin Nunes, the former U.S. congressman and now CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, shared his thoughts about Musk during an appearance on “Mornings With Maria” on Fox Business.
“Twitter is kind of a ghost town, they desperately need Elon Musk to be there,” Nunes said.
Nunes continued by saying there is not much activity on the Twitter platform and “Elon Musk’s gonna have a lot of work to do over there.”
Trump Media & Technology Group is the parent company of Truth Social, a social media platform launched promising no censorship and appealing to a pro-free speech crowd. Trump Media & Technology Group announced a SPAC merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp DWAC in late 2021.
“The goal that President Trump has is to open the internet back up so the American people can get their voice back," said Nunes.
Nunes said Truth Social’s interactions are already beating Twitter. Truth Social is working to bring people on every day, according to the CEO.
Related Link: 5 Things You Might Not Know About Devin Nunes, CEO Of Trump Media & Technology Group
Why It’s Important: Twitter reported 217 million monetizable daily active users in the most recently reported quarter, up 13% year-over-year. Truth Social does not readily make its number of users or growth publicly available.
A Sensor Tower strategist estimates that Truth Social has around 1.2 million installs since its launch.
A recent report showed downloads of Truth Social have dropped by 93% since the first week the app was available. Downloads of Truth Social have slipped to around 60,000 per week on the iOS store from Apple Inc AAPL.
Truth Social is not currently available for the Android platform owned by Alphabet Inc GOOGGOOGL.
“We now would like to get to the point where we clear all the people that have signed up on Apple. That is our goal and then have the web application, and once we have a web application, then everybody will be able to get on,” he said.
Nunes added that after all Apple users are brought on, Android will become “the next stop” for the company.
Social audio app Clubhouse saw huge growth in 2021 but suffered from a drop in user growth and only being available to iOS users. Twitter Spaces and Discord have taken a strong market share from Clubhouse since.
Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter, a position that was publicly revealed Monday. Musk was also named to the company’s board of directors. There are people on Twitter already calling for Musk to help bring back people, including Trump, who were banned on the social media platform.
Trump has not posted on Truth Social since its official rollout. A return to Twitter by Trump and subsequent posting could suggest an end to Truth Social.
Coincidentally, Nunes said Musk believes in free speech, represented as such by Truth Social, suggesting that any changes made by Musk could help Twitter better compete with the differentiating factor of Truth Social.
DWAC Price Action: Digital World Acquisition shares are trading down 2.81% to $46.66 on Friday morning at publication. Digital World Acquisition shares remain up more than 380% in the last year, but are now trading down 24% over the last five trading sessions on news of Musk’s Twitter stake.
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