Truth Social on Tuesday climbed to the No. 1 spot in Apple app store, beating out 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 was No. 171 on April 23 and climbed to No. 20 in the U.S. app store on April 25, the day that Twitter and Musk reached a deal. Twitter rose to the No. 5 of the top free apps list on the same day and is currently ranked second, behind Truth Social, according to Sensor Tower.
“Before April 23, Truth Social had not previously ranked since March 12,” Stephanie Chan, mobile insights strategist at 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.”
This is a welcome development for the Trump-backed Truth Social, which has been experiencing a challenging rollout and slow adoption rate since launching on President’s Day. It previously saw a 93% drop in signups and similarly steep decline in traffic after a rocky rollout throughout February. At launch, the social app was fraught with technical issues and an extensive waiting list for new signups to actually use the service.
After going live on President’s Day, the Twitter-lookalike app saw installs decline by more than 800,000 since its launch week, according to Sensor Tower. Installs on the Apple app store in March fell to about 60,000 per week, based on early estimates. So far, Sensor Tower estimates Truth Social has reached 1.4 million installs to date. It was around 1.2 million in March.
Analysts had attributed Truth Social’s previous slowdown in traffic and downloads to technical issues that plagued the app at launch. Users had been downloading the app only to get waitlisted. On top of that, despite being branded as the social platform of the former president, “it turned out there wasn’t much for them to do there,” David Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb, previously told TheWrap.
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 everybody to come over to Truth — conservatives, liberals, whatever,” Trump told Fox News. “The response on Truth is much better than being on Twitter.”
It’s unclear what content moderation policies specifically Musk will implement when he takes Twitter private, as he’s suggested he will do, and whether Trump could get reinstated on the social networking service after his ban last year.
Trump received an indefinite suspension from Twitter in January 2021 after the U.S. Capitol riots. The company said it decided on his ban following the attack by Trump supporters to prevent further “incitement of violence.” Trump had gained more than 80 million followers on the platform.