Truth Social climbed to No. 1 spot in Apple’s app store on Tuesday, beating Twitter just a day after the company was acquired by Elon Musk.
Former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social app previously ranked far lower in the days leading up to Twitter’s purchase. It became No. 171 on April 23 and climbed to No. 20 in the U.S. app store on April 25, the day Twitter and Musk reached an agreement. Twitter rose to No. 5 on the list of free apps the same day and is currently ranked second, after Truth Social, according to Sensor Tower.
“Before April 23, Truth Social had not previously ranked since March 12,” Stephanie Chan, mobile insight strategist at Sensor Tower, told TheWrap. “This was also the first time Truth Social has ranked No. 1 on the overall US App Store since February 24. Shortly after its launch.”
This is a welcome development for the Trump-backed Truth Social, which has experienced a challenging rollout and slow adoption rate since its launch on President’s Day. It previously saw a 93% drop in sign-ups and a correspondingly steep drop in traffic following a rocky rollout throughout February. At launch, the social app was fraught with technical issues and an extensive waiting list for new sign-ups to actually use the service.
After going live on President’s Day, the Twitter lookalike app saw the number of installations drop by more than 800,000 since launch week, according to Sensor Tower. Installations at Apple’s app store in March dropped to around 60,000 a week, based on early estimates. So far, Sensor Tower estimates that Truth Social has reached 1.4 million installations to date. That was about 1.2 million in March.
Analysts had attributed Truth Social’s previous slowdown in traffic and downloads to technical issues plaguing the app at launch. Users had only downloaded the app to become a waiting list. On top of that, despite being branded as the former president’s social platform, “it turned out there was not much for them to do there,” David Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb, told TheWrap earlier.
Meanwhile, the former president has yet to post anything on his own social network after more than a month of operation – but said in a Fox News interview this week that he plans to start using Truth Social in the coming days.
“I want everyone to come over to Truth – conservative, liberal, whatever,” Trump told Fox News. “The reaction to Truth is much better than being on Twitter.”
It’s unclear what content moderation policies specifically Musk will implement when he takes Twitter privately, which he has suggested he will do, and whether Trump could be reinstated on the social networking service after his ban last year.
Trump received an indefinite suspension from Twitter in January 2021 following the US Capitol riots. The company said it decided his ban after the attack on Trump supporters to prevent further “incitement to violence”. Trump had gained more than 80 million followers on the platform.