TRUTH Social, the social media app owned by former Republican President Donald Trump is set to open its virtual doors to users who pre-ordered it on the Apple Store when the clock strikes 12 a.m. on Monday. The company is operating in what a source called a "staged approach" and said that Trump's social media app will welcome new users who pre-ordered it over the next 10 days.
Fox Business reported that TRUTH Social has already welcomed several prominent users such as influencers, politicians and celebrities as well as eager Americans who were the first to pre-order the app on the Apple App Store.
Such prominent users who are already using Trump's social media app are Fox News' Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk, rapper Kodak Black, and country music singer Travis Tritt, among others.
TRUTH Social aims to be fully operational by the end of this quarter, on their expected launch date. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the company behind Trump's social media app is not relying on any traditional Big Tech companies to support its infrastructure, a source said.
Instead, it is using its cloud services partnership with Rumble, a Toronto-based online video platform that is positioning itself as an alternative to YouTube and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
TMTG CEO Devin Nunes is actually the first elected official to use Rumble's video platform back in 2020. He joined TMTG in December as the CEO after retiring from a two-decade service in Congress. During Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Nunes remarked that "every day we bring on more and more Americans and we're getting to you as quickly as possible."
"We're doing something that is really...just such a great opportunity for President Trump, for me, for our whole team that's working at TMTG around the clock," Nunes explained, adding that there is certainly an "excitement" from those who have been "booted from social media for the last two or three years."
Nunes called the excitement of people coming together on Trump's social media app "inspirational." He remarked, "It's actually very moving for me to see people that are on the platform that have had their voice canceled-And that's our main goal here is to give people their voice back."
TMTG first launched in October 2021 with $1 billion in capital from institutional investors. The company behind Trump's social media app also partnered with a San Francisco-based Series D start-up called Hive that offers automated solutions through cloud-based artificial intelligence geared towards understanding images, videos and text content. TMTG plans on becoming a publicly listed company through a merger with the publicly traded Digital World Acquisition Corp. The company specializes in acquiring businesses and taking them public.
Reuters reported that Trump's social media app are positioning themselves as "champions of free speech," catering to those who have been censored by Big Tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more.
It may also go up against other earlier companies such as Gettr and Parler. Apple's App Store listing indicates that the launch date of TRUTH Social is on February 21, coinciding with its early access, but Nunes said to expect the full launch by the end of March.
