Elon Musk has tweeted that Donald Trump’s Truth Social app is beating Twitter in the iPhone download charts.
He tweeted the news on Wednesday, with the caption: “Truth Social is currently beating Twitter & TikTok on the Apple Store”.
Truth Social is currently beating Twitter & TikTok on the Apple Store pic.twitter.com/RxawVUAYKH
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022
Truth Social, developed by the former US President after he was kicked off Twitter for his part in the January 6 Capitol riots, climbed to number one on Tuesday, outranking Twitter.
It comes just days after Twitter’s board agreed to be acquired by the Space X and Tesla billionaire for $44bn (£34.6bn).
On Monday, before the takeover deal was announced, Truth Social was ranked 52nd and Twitter was in 39th place in the Apple Store download chart.
However, downloads of Truth Social rose to 75,000 for the week up to April 25 - up 150 per cent from the previous week, according to data from monitoring service Sensor Tower.
The Truth Social app launched in February but was plagued with technical glitches and long waiting lists.
It has been downloaded roughly 1.4 million times to date since its launch in February, according to Sensor Tower.
The former US President announced he was launching his own social networking site as a free speech alternative to rival “liberal” media platforms after he was handed an indefinite suspension by Twitter following the Capitol riots.
The company said it was banning Mr Trump, who had more than 80 million followers on the platform, to prevent further “incitement of violence.”
Truth Social was due to be fully operational by the end of March but in April, millions of people were still stuck on the public wait list.
Mr Musk’s purchase of Twitter has raised questions over whether Mr Trump will return to the platform.
Announcing the news of the takeover, Mr Musk tweeted on Monday: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.
“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
However, Mr Trump has insisted he does not want to return to the social media site, saying he would rather use his own alternative Truth Social app.
