Patterico's Pontifications

6/2/2021

No Staying Power: Trump Scraps His Blog

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:12 am



[guest post by Dana]

Well, it does take a lot of hard work to build up a readership, but I’m guessing that he just assumed that millions of his Twitter followers would migrate to his new blog. But that didn’t happen:

The blog page that former President Donald Trump launched less than one month ago, after his team suggested he’d be launching a major new social platform, has been permanently shuttered.

Jason Miller, a senior aide to Trump, told CNBC that the page “will not be returning.”

Miller confirmed to CNN that the page had been scrubbed.

“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Miller said.

To be clear, Trump wasn’t banned from the platform this time around, like he was on other social media platforms. Low readership was a problem:

At the time of his social media ban in January, Trump boasted tens of millions of followers on Twitter and millions on Facebook.

Trump’s blog, in contrast, struggled to amass even a fraction of that engagement, NBC News reported a week after its launch, citing data compiled with BuzzSumo.

More specifically:

The [Washington Post] newspaper reported 159,000 total social media interactions on the blog’s first day. But the following day, interactions dropped to 30,000 and did not surpass 15,000 interactions per day since that peak.

I think the biggest contributing factor to shutting down the blog was that the blog did not provide Trump with the instant gratification he craves and desperately needs as his Twitter account did. There, millions of his followers would shower him with the likes, retweets, and all manner of affirmation and aggrandizement. If there is anyone who doesn’t like being ignored, it’s Trump. But I’m sure something will turn up for the poor guy who can’t find a megaphone big enough…

–Dana

26 Responses to “No Staying Power: Trump Scraps His Blog”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (fd537d)

  2. Sad!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  3. What i thought was hilarious was that he didn’t have comments enabled on his blog. Had he done that it probably would have helped his engagement.

    Time123 (66d88c)

  4. What’s really gonna hurt is lack of media coverage of his rebooted rallies. It will go from a Page 1 headline to In Other News…. on page 15.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  5. So I’m curious how, if he runs in 2024, he will get the same level of outrageous engagement with followers if he doesn’t have Twitter, FB, or even a personal blog? While he thrives on rallies and engaging with supporters, he certainly couldn’t have enough to make up for the loss of social media engagement.

    Dana (fd537d)

  6. It’s June, 2021 and Trump lingers. Meanwhile, Newsmax reported this AM a Secret Service source indicated President Plagiarist to begin a general ‘transition’ to VP Harris beginning this August. Speculation. Yet troubling all the same. And today, with two Russian-sourced cyberattacks on U.S. businesses in the past 72 hours …

    Q- “Do you think Putin is testing you?”

    A- “No.” – President Plagiarist, 6/2/21

    Idiot.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  7. Remember when the guy was going to build a new television network and media empire? Can’t even run a damn blog correctly.

    JVW (fade4c)

  8. @7. Wouldn’t be all that dismissive of his media savvy. He knows how to conduct the orchestra to play his tunes.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  9. JVW, The GOP is being led by a lazy man who can’t stick with something for more then a month that doesn’t provide nearly instant gratification.

    Was Trump 2016 really great? Or was he just standing on the shoulders of Twitter?

    Time123 (66d88c)

  10. I guess Low Energy Donnie just can’t hack it as a blogger.

    John (cd2753)

  11. He should’ve had a comments section, which would’ve been, uh, lively.

    Paul Montagu (a05eda)

  12. MSNBC reports ‘pitchforker’ photographed w/feet up on Pelosi’s desk on 1/6 has website selling autographed photos of same for $100 donations to his legal defense fund.

    Don’t scoff; could be an investment:

    Oswald’s signature sold for $12,500.00…. and a 100 year old watercolor painting of Munich’s old city hall painted by the Great and Mighty Adolf Hitler has sold for $162,000.00 at a German auction, the AP reports.

    Reaganomics!

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  13. @12, isn’t there a law that you’re not allowed to profit from a crime? If convicted can they force disgorgement of that?

    Time123 (66d88c)

  14. He’s actually just selling his autograph. And his lawyers are allowed to profit.

    But there’s another law – if he has a judgment against him or a fine, any money can be used to pay.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  15. @5 well then good thing fb and twitter don’t make or break campaigns

    they’re just platforms after all and their councils of super smart people are saving us from candidates we don’t like

    [eagle screech]

    JF (e1156d)

  16. lawyers won’t believe this, but starting a successful social media platform isn’t like picking up coding for dummies and just typing

    JF (e1156d)

  17. JF (e1156d) — 6/2/2021 @ 1:03 pm

    [eagle screech]

    That looked like The Eagle of Freedom and it sounded like it screeched ‘merica f’yea. Or maybe it was f’u? We’re all so fortunate either way.

    frosty (f27e97)

  18. Unfortunately for conservative economic libertarians trump was a symbol for populist outrage in the republican party. Populism in the republican party increases as trump fades. We see this in voter suppression laws. Trumps support in the republican party is still huge and never trumpets need not apply to the republican party.

    asset (34e970)

  19. @13. All the more reason to rush and buy your copy of that pix… today!

    “Supplies are limited!” 😉

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  20. He’s going underground in the lead-up to the August coup.

    Dave (1542be)

  21. On a blog, you tend to post long pieces and Trump didn’t want to write them and his readers didn’t want to read them, so they went back to Instapundit.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  22. So I’m curious how, if he runs in 2024, he will get the same level of outrageous engagement with followers if he doesn’t have Twitter, FB, or even a personal blog?

    If he is the Republican candidate and they still shut him out they had effing better win, hadn’t they?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  23. Trump Considers Contenders to Be His New Social-Media Outlet After Big Tech Crackdown
    ……..
    CloutHub is one of several companies the Trump camp is considering, people familiar with the discussions say. Another is FreeSpace, a Facebook alternative. Its parent company, Skylab Apps Inc., promises customers—which range from CBD sellers to Promise Keepers, an evangelical Christian group—autonomous social-media networks that can’t easily be blocked or shut down.
    ……..
    The former president is interested in being paid in exchange for the followers he would presumably bring to the new social networks, people familiar with the situation said. Mr. Trump had nearly 89 million Twitter followers.

    “He’s not that interested in equity. He wants cash money up front, like a license fee,” said one person familiar with the process.
    ……..
    Mr. Trump has a rough target to unveil his new social-media plans by July 4, people familiar with the matter said. It is possible he could require multiple partners to replace the functionality of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
    ……..
    Skylab offers clients “an autonomous technological and financial ecosystem free from Big Tech and Wall Street,” according to an investor presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It includes a private cloud for powering web services, payment processing through independent banks, and its own ad network, (Dean Grey, the chairman of Skylab) said.
    ……..
    Although Mr. Trump has met with representatives of Skylab’s FreeSpace social network, another possibility would be for him to buy or lease code from Skylab to create his own social-media network, according to people familiar with the matter.

    ……(Jeff Brain, the chief executive of CloutHub) said that his platform, which launched in 2019, is ideal for Mr. Trump’s purposes because it is specifically designed for civic debate. It includes an Instagram-like news feed with user posts, and a channel for YouTube-like online videos. Mr. Brain said he didn’t intend for the platform to cater to either side of the political aisle, but it has proven popular with conservatives.
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  24. If he is the Republican candidate and they still shut him out they had effing better win, hadn’t they?

    Thing is, he’d beat Harris like a rug.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  25. Someone wrote that Trump didn’t understand that it was a blog. (I didn’t read further to understand what was meant)

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  26. Breaking: Facebook says Donald Trump to remain banned from platform for 2 years, effective from Jan. 7, 2021.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)


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