Will Truth Social solve Donald Trump's money problems?

 The share price of Donald Trump's media company has fallen from last week's high when it officially listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

But it is still worth more than $7bn (£5.6bn) at current prices - an astonishing sum given the business behind it. So what is the Truth Social platform, who owns it, how many users does it have, and how much money does it make? And is it the answer to Mr Trump's spiralling legal bills?

What do Truth Social and Trump Media stand for? 
The Trump Media & Technology Group was established in 2021 following Mr. Trump's temporary exclusion from popular social media sites including Facebook and Twitter due to allegations that he had incited violence following his loss in the presidential election. Two men who had competed on his reality TV show .

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The Apprentice presented him with the concept. They recognized a chance to develop a social media platform that was different from the popular ones.The social media platform Truth Social was the first—and thus far only—product that Trump Media released to the general public in 2022.Truth Social and X share a great deal of the same functionality. Users can send direct messages and submit "truths" or "retruths." Conversely, advertisements are known as "sponsored truths." 

What is the number of users on it?

Since its launch, 9 million Truth Social accounts, according to Trump Media, have been generated.
Although Truth Social does not provide its user count, research firm SimilarWeb calculates that in February of this year, there were 5 million monthly visitors to the website. In contrast, Facebook had over 3 billion visits, and TikTok had over 2 billion. X saw 104 million visits in February, according to SimilarWeb.

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Compared to his 87 million followers on X, Mr. Trump has just about 7 million on Truth Social. After the end of 2022, the former president's X account was restored, but he hasn't posted anything since. 

How much revenue does it generate?
It doesn't. According to its most recent financial report, Trump Media lost around $60 million in 2023 while only earning approximately $4 million from advertising. The company reportedly expressed "substantial doubt" about its capacity to stay in business.
The report served as yet another reminder of the significant disparity between the company's financial statements and its stock price, which places its value at about $7 billion.
As a comparison, Twitter reported $660 million in sales and a market value of about $24 billion when it went public on the stock market in 2013.That amount had increased to more than $5 billion by 2021—the year before Elon Musk paid $44 billion to acquire Twitter. 

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How does Trump benefit the business?
The way that Mr. Trump is associated with the company is somewhat reminiscent of the licensing agreements he utilized to build his real estate empire, wherein he inked his name to endorse a company that was mostly owned by third parties. In this instance, Mr. Trump has additionally consented to publish non-political content on Truth Social first.Another distinction is that Mr. Trump was compensated for this arrangement by receiving shares in the new start-up rather than receiving a steady supply of automatic licensing payments.