Trump’s Truth Social Tops App Store Amid Musk’s Twitter Purchase

An image of former President Donald Trump next to a phone screen that is displaying the Truth Social app in Washington, on Feb. 21, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social topped the Apple App Store downloads list days after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

The Truth Social app rose to No. 1 on the charts on April 26, coming amid speculation that Musk’s purchase of Twitter for $44 billion would imperil the Trump-backed platform. Musk himself posted about the sudden shift in the app’s download rates.

“Truth Social is currently beating Twitter & TikTok on the Apple Store,” he wrote, and included a screenshot of a chart from AppFigures.com.

“Before April 23, Truth Social had not previously ranked since March 12,” Stephanie Chan, an analyst with Sensor Tower, told TheWrap. “This was also the first time Truth Social has ranked at No. 1 on the overall U.S. App Store since Feb. 24, shortly after its launch.”

Truth Social currently isn’t available for Android platforms, although its management previously said it would be in the future. The social media app first appeared on the Apple Store in late February 2022.

The shift in the number of downloads might be a result of Truth Social’s hardware upgrades. On April 22, the firm said it had moved its applications to video-sharing platform Rumble’s cloud computing service, CEO and former congressman Devin Nunes said.

Truth Social was founded by the Trump Media & Technology Group in opposition to Twitter and other Big Tech companies, amid accusations that those firms are censoring conservative voices and individuals whose viewpoints are opposed by mainstream media. Since its launch several months ago, however, users have reported an exceptionally long waitlist.

Trump, who was banned from Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, told Fox News and other outlets this week that he doesn’t plan on joining Twitter, even with Musk’s pro-free speech stance. Before he was banned, Trump was perhaps Twitter’s most influential user, having amassed more than 80 million followers.

In a recent interview with Just the News, Nunes said that the platform is now open to millions more users due to the switch to Rumble.

“It means you are going to be getting on within hours; we are on the Apple app store, you can go download it and you are going to get on in short order,” Nunes said last week.

“We opened the new Rumble cloud ... and it went off flawlessly, thankfully, because this is something that we had been beta-testing for many weeks,” he said. “I think in the next few hours or so we are going to get rid of this waitlist. Maybe tomorrow morning but it is coming quickly, it is an exciting time and it has just been fun.”

On April 27, Digital World Acquisition Corp.—the special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) behind Truth Social—saw its shares rise about 9 percent to $44.55.