Analysis: There is a possibility that Trump's social platform, Truth Social, may merge with Musk's X platform

According to Forbes, Trump's social platform Truth Social may merge with Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter). Data shows that Truth Social's revenue in the third quarter of this year was only $2.6 million, with 698,000 monthly active users on mobile and 11.3 million monthly website visits; in contrast, X platform is expected to reach an annual advertising revenue of $2 billion, with 70.4 million monthly active users and up to 1 billion monthly website visits. Erik Nisbet, director of the Center for Communication and Public Policy at Northwestern University, said that since Musk took over, the content style of X platform has gradually moved closer to Truth Social. Both platforms use "freedom of speech" as a selling point and mainly target conservative audiences.

Data shows that 57% of Truth Social users use it as a daily news source compared to 59% for X Platform. In terms of content review standards, X Platform still maintains relatively strict standards and has banned approximately 5.3 million violating accounts in the first half of this year alone due primarily because it needs to maintain relationships with large corporate advertisers while Truth Social has almost no advertising business so its content review is relatively relaxed by comparison . Industry insiders believe that potential merger would make more commercial sense for Trump as an exit strategy cashing out his current stake valued around $3.3 billion.