PANews reported on November 14 that according to Forbes, Trump's social platform Truth Social and Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter) may merge. Data shows that Truth Social's revenue in the third quarter of this year was only 2.6 million US dollars, with 698,000 monthly active users on mobile terminals and 11.3 million monthly website visits; in contrast, X platform is expected to have annual advertising revenue of 2 billion US dollars, 70.4 million monthly active users, and 1 billion monthly website visits. Erik Nisbet, director of the Center for Communication and Public Policy at Northwestern University, said that since Musk took over, the content style of X platform has gradually moved closer to Truth Social. Both platforms use "freedom of speech" as a selling point and are mainly aimed at conservative audiences.
Data shows that 57% of Truth Social users use it as a daily news source, while 59% of X platform users use it as a daily news source. In terms of content review, X platform still maintains relatively strict standards, and has banned about 5.3 million illegal accounts in the first half of this year. This is mainly because the platform needs to maintain relationships with large corporate advertisers. Truth Social has almost no advertising business, so it is relatively loose in content review. Industry insiders believe that the potential merger is more commercially meaningful to Trump and can be used as his cash-out exit strategy. The current market value of his holdings is about US$3.3 billion.
