Alex Gleason’s announced his departure from Truth in an interview with Reuters amidst the delay in the take-off of Truth Social which was launched by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), following the forceful exit of former President Trump on all major social media platform after the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s followers on January 6, 2021.
Gleason who is also the founder of Soapbox Technology, which provides open-source technology for “decentralized” social media platforms that operate independently-run servers, providing alternatives to Twitter and Facebook.
Disclosing in his interview, Gleason said he is leaving TMTG to work on the Soapbox project fully, developing technology for connecting multiple decentralized platforms.
Former President Donald Trump had hired Gleason for TMTG in January 2022 in the hope to adapt Soapbox’s technology for its own needs, adopting its front-end technology, so users can see and interact with for Truth Social app.
Truth Social has struggled to gain traction since its launch in February 2022, however, Trump was reinstated on popularly used platforms like Twitter and Facebook but Truth Social’s user base has not grown to reach the targets laid out for it by TMTG in November 2021. It had projected to its investors that its users will reach 56 million users by 2024 and 81 million by 2026.
However, Truth Social has only grown to an estimated 607,000 monthly users, this is according to data from Similarweb.
Trump had 88 million followers on Twitter before his account was suspended while he has 5.71 million followers on Truth Social.
TMTG had announced in October 2021, a deal with blank-check firm Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC.O) which would see it go public, but the merger is believed not to be able to push through due to investigations by the Justice Department and the U.S. securities regulator.
However, a recent filing report showed that DWAC has reached an agreement with the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission, although the terms are not definitive yet and are still subject to SEC’s approval.
