Oh, you weren’t? You kind of forgot that it exists? You don’t really care what he says anymore?
Then you already know. It’s a bust.
Four months after former President Donald Trump was banished from most mainstream social media platforms, he returned to the web last Tuesday with “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” essentially a blog for his musings.
A week since the unveiling, social media data suggests things are not going well.
The ex-president’s blog has drawn a considerably smaller audience than his once-powerful social media accounts, according to engagement data compiled with BuzzSumo, a social media analytics company. The data offers a hint that while Trump remains a political force, his online footprint is still dependent on returning to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Part of his problem is that his blog isn’t particularly good or well designed.
“In the case of Trump’s new platform, it is so technologically primitive that there is no way for his followers to even migrate,” Blackburn said. “Who cares about a platform where you can’t even own the libs? There are plenty of other newsletters that people have been adding to their spam boxes for years.”
I know. You weren’t wondering. But now you know!
Ray Ceeya says
He should have used SquareSpace.
drksky says
My theory is that whomever they hired to set up the site is working against him and made the shittiest version of a blog they could think of. How else could something be that bad. Well, besides the complete incompetence that surrounds him.
specialffrog says
Given how Trump is famous for not paying people what he owes them I can imagine the pool of skilled people willing to do work for him is limited.
johnson catman says
I think maybe the answer is a combination of mostly specialffrog @3, since The Orange Cheapskate probably wouldn’t pay up front, with a possibility of drksky @2.
PaulBC says
No, I wasn’t. But I wonder how many people just have a fixed set of phone apps they never leave. It doesn’t seem like much just to get someone to go to Trump’s URL if they are interested, but it’s off the past of least resistance. Does his blog have its own phone app? I think the proliferation of phone apps is an asinine trend, since most of this could be delivered through a standard browser, but it might make a difference.
garnetstar says
What I’m kind of worried about, though, is that Zuckerberg will bow down and let Trump’s six-months Facebook ban not be permament. Zuckerberg has no shame at all. He wants the traffic of all the MAGAs going back to their screaming leader, and not even the end of democracy will stand in his way.
Then it’ll start all over again. Trump manipulated the MAGAs with fear and loathing very successfully, and he’ll do it again.
whywhywhy says
I visited. It is a cheap installation of a page over a fund raising site. The only way to interact is to give money.
I did find it funny that the banner scrolling on the donation section simply repeated the same five names of folks who have just donated. I have not gone back to see if the names have changed…
Intransitive says
For the last two years, I hoped the republicans would do to Trump what was done to Nikita Khrushchev, a bloodless coup d’etat. No such luck.
On the other hand, Trump looks to be suffering Khrushchev’s fate after removal: a non-person, his influence fading, and – with any luck – left with very little money and forced to scrape by month to month.
PaulBC says
Intransitive@8
Most of the GOP is throwing their lot in with him. So he’ll pull them down or they’ll pull him up. I have no idea which.
There’s good reason for pessimism about the 2022 election. On the other hand, their behavior still looks totally crazy to me. Trump provides no advantages for policy or political strategy. He does, however, symbolize Republican (i.e. white) grievances and aspirations perfectly. Any other leader would be unacceptable at this point.
Akira MacKenzie says
PaulBC @ 9
Since when has crazy been an impediment to obtaining popularity and political power, especially in America?
acroyear says
The ‘bots’ couldn’t get involved.
When you look at the site, it is clear by the 3 icons that there were 3 goals and only 3 goals:
1) collect ‘likes’ to make Trump happy
2) share to Twitter because he can’t post there
3) share to Facebook because he can’t post there
The latter two, the idea being that once it is shared, the bot brigade would take over and make things viral and thus the rest of us would be forced to see the posts. “Own the libs” – because social media was never about reaching his own audience, it was about forcing the rest of us to see his shit, because that, to him, is real power.
But the bot brigade wasn’t enough, as FB makes it easy to block anything from a particular website, and it just never seemed to catch on big enough for the bots to notice on twitter.
acroyear says
@PaulBC – 11:
“Most of the GOP is throwing their lot in with him.”
I’m not sure they’re doing that. More they’re throwing their lot in the idea of him to keep the base. He’s a non-issue. He’s a symbol they want, just as much as Reagan was more a symbol for what they wanted once he was out of office and gone.
Reagan was never who they said he was (he was actually slightly better), just as Trump was never who they said he was (he was much worse). But they don’t care about the real person. They care about the symbol.
Trump is a symbol…and he’s going to find it actually worse than Khrushchev because here he is being treated as the symbol for their future, yet they also fully intend to leave him out of it. He’s a key to their taking things back, but they’re going to really try to take it back without him. Just the symbol of him. They’ll never offer him the throne in 2024 – they just need the base to THINK they will…
Autobot Silverwynde says
I’m not surprised. A lot of members have dropped out of the cult, since Trump disappeared and didn’t pardon any of the Capitol Building seditionists. He still has a fanbase, but it’s much smaller now.
birgerjohansson says
OT
On the subjects of cults …. God Awful Movies has brought out a new review, this time it is a film about “Jesus Camp”. GAM299 comes complete with the big dose if sarcasm I need to endure a world dominated by MAGA hats. And now back to the ordinary thread.
Aaron says
Trump’s presence on social media was profitable, so they let him exist on it. Now it isn’t, so they don’t. If he becomes profitable to host again, they’ll renege. It’s as simple as that.
If you think that’s a good thing, then remember that the same companies that make those decisions are also in charge of people who aren’t nearly as well-off. Deleting, suspending, demonetizing and otherwise silencing Leftist voices happens much more often than doing the same to (alleged) billionaires.
Akira MacKenzie says
birgerjohansson @ 14
You sure? The last episode of GAM, 299, was “A Week Away” which was a Christian musical taking place at a Jesus camp.
brightmoon says
Donald Jobless Trump and hoping he stays that way !
robro says
acroyear @ #11 — There’s a #4: Collecting donations. Not surprising as that’s the main point of all political sites. It’s not exactly an icon but a large “call to action” button, as it’s known in the trade…at least where I work.
Frederic Bourgault-Christie says
@15: Yeah. And they’ll always do that. They will always censor leftist speech. So… why should we unilaterally disarm?
Frederic Bourgault-Christie says
I had actually expected that, even given how shitty it was, enough cultists would be desperate for his every word that it’d do at least okay.
What this means, empirically, is that social media is responsible for birthing this generation of fascism. It was only by making his speech and the speech of the alt-right amplifiers of his most extreme ideas easy to share that he was able to get power.
PaulBC says
Frederic Bourgault-Christie@20 I’m not sure. I think it’s true that social media empowered Trump as soon as he got on the birtherism bandwagon and he would have continued to be a joke without it. Even so, reality TV, not the Internet, is what persuaded tens of millions of Americans, seemingly with no long term memory that Trump was a business genius and not a con-artist with decades of bankruptcies to his name.
“Tea Party” activism in 2009 had more conventional political, old-media, and astroturf funding behind it. That morphed somehow from a movement of rich people who resented mortgage forgiveness into a anti-Obama group motivated by racism more than anything else. I don’t think Trumpism would have been the same without its success in kneecapping the Obama presidency halfway into the first term.
birgerjohansson says
Akira MacKenzie @ 16
I should have expressed myself clearer.
A sarcastic commentary of current news is to be found in “The Scathing Atheist (last issue 429) by Noah Lugeons and the rest of the gang from God Awful Movies.
GAM 299 is a critical dissection of a christian musical (in the manner of “Mock the Movie”) that managed to conflate the criminal justice system (grand theft auto-style) with the care system for children and youngsters (foster care etc.) The conservatives that made the film really think the law is toothless.
While a Jesus camp is torment for a critical thinker, it is hardly as bad as the place where they send you if you actually steal a police car! (also, this christian film is not allowed to show teenagers might want to be more than friends with the opposite sex).
Anyway, I digress from the topic of the thread, I just wanted to put the info out there if you want a facetious distraction from the more grim religious news in the middle east.
.
“…so technologically primitive…” -Apt symbolism!
“The only way to interact is to give money.” Doubly apt!
Frederic Bourgault-Christie says
@21: Fair enough, but three points. First, Trump’s reputation preceded reality TV, so if we take a broader look, we would need to blame the media landscape. Second, you can’t really separate social media from the reality TV phenomenon. The Apprentice came out in 2004 and Myspace in 2003. Reality TV has always been inextricably tied in with social media. But, most importantly, I think we both agree that Trump may have remained a washed up reality TV star with pathetic presidential ambitions if he hadn’t been able to combine his conventional coverage with a social media presence (particularly right as the older generations hit social media).
Aaron says
@16 We shouldn’t. We should make Facebook (and other social media) a public utility. Facebook, in a form where it is owned by a small number of people, is much more of a danger to us than Trump is, and its owners are our actual enemies, not the blowhards they use to distract us.
Aaron says
Sorry, that was directed @19, not @16