MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th March, 2021) Former US President Donald Trump's own social media platform, which he pledged to launch soon since he was banned from Twitter and other leading services, will likely attract the interest of certain audiences, but may struggle to drum up long-term popularity, experts told Sputnik.
On Sunday, Trump's spokesman said that the former president would be returning to social media in a few months with his own platform that was going to attract "tens of millions" of new users and "completely redefine the game."
The plans to create his own platform emerged after Trump has been banned by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube in the wake of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot. The reason was his address to the protesters who seized the Capitol building in Washington to prevent Congress from certifying the Joe Biden election victory. Calling on them to behave peacefully and go home, Trump, however, reiterated 2020 election fraud allegations.
UNCERTAINTIES AND LIMITED OPTIONS
As the former president is yet to announce how the platform would work, Pradip Thomas, an associate professor of communication and arts at Australia's University of Queensland, wonders whether it would have the potential to become a global right-wing social network.
"He will continue to have a sizable audience although I am sure that there will be many who have turned skeptic and have second thoughts about following Trump. The question is whether such a platform will be shaped in such a way that it remains strictly 'Trumpian' or whether it will offer space for global right wing talk. If this platform becomes a reality, how will it relate to sites such as Breitbart that was established by Trump's friend Steve Bannon and Fox News?" Thomas told Sputnik.
Even though Trump does have the resources to launch his own social media platform, which may prove instantly popular due to his large group of supporters, it might be difficult to retain the audience in the long-term, according to Ilya Glukhov, a senior social media manager with the Moscow-based digital agency VBI.
"The bottom line is yes, the idea is viable, but personally I still have big doubts about how his team will retain the audience long-term. Since, after a big take-off, there may be a sharp drop, as it has happened with Clubhouse (the audience is now actively flowing away from the platform). We should wait for the launch and test it out. At least at the current stage, it has already attracted the interest of the public and caused a lot of discussions," Glukhov told Sputnik.
Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida, agrees with Glukhov and notes that it takes years for social media platforms to solidify its popularity and secure large following, while an overnight success of a social network does not necessarily indicate its resiliency.
"Any time you expect to create a new platform, it is possible, but it becomes very difficult if there is exponential growth right at the beginning because you would need to have such a tremendous amount of resources, whether it is staff, server space. The design needs to be impressive. Unless it is something Trump and a number of people involved in the tech field have been working on for some time, it seems that any attempt to do that would be very difficult, if not impossible," Selepak told Sputnik.
The University of Florida's professor pointed to the example of Parler that enjoyed rapid growth at the beginning, but then struggled to stay viable.
Parler, which describes itself as a free speech social platform, rose to prominence last year and proved popular among Trump's supporters in light of increasing censorship and moderation by Facebook and Twitter. It attracted over 10 million users after the US presidential election, however Parler went offline in January as Google, Apple and Amazon suspended their services and accused it of hosting content that encourages violence.
Trump's team has to keep in mind that the audience at large does not want to make the switch from traditional platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and in general are not interested in an additional platform to what they are already using, according to Selepak.
"Most of the time people are pretty much the creatures of habit, they would like to continue using what they have been using and not learn something new and not to rebuild their brands and rebuild their followers, their audiences, especially if it doesn't have the same potential [as major social networks]," the expert said.
In light of this, the former president may have to ponder whether it is better to use or collaborate with one of the existing platforms, where he has not been banned, such as the Telegram messaging app or Parler, which has returned online even though Apple reportedly turned down the network's bid to return to the App Store.
"I could see that it would more sense to make that kind of switch and start using something like Telegram or Parler, where he has not been deplatformed, or potentially purchase some kind of ownership of one of the existing platforms, or where he has a more branding stake in the platform. Having something that is in place, existing and operational rather than trying to create a whole new platform does make a little bit more sense than starting from scratch as the infrastructure needed to do that is pretty significant and that seems less likely, but anything is possible," the University of Florida professor said.
However even the option of partnering with the existing social media platform has certain limitations as both Telegram and Parler do not have a wide outreach in the United States, Selepak noted.
So far, the public sentiment in the US towards a potential social media platform by Trump is largely skeptical as 52 percent saying that they will unlikely use the service and 6 percent somewhat unlikely, the Newsweek media outlet reported earlier in the day citing a YouGov poll. A fifth - 20 percent - of the surveyed responded that they were very likely to use the service and 11 percent somewhat likely.
In terms of party affiliation, the support for Trump's social media platform is much higher among the Republicans as 50 percent of them indicated that were very likely to use the platform, while 19 percent said that it was somewhat likely.
