Truth Social launches real-time information service to provide Wall Street traders with market opportunities
The company that operates the social media platform TruthSocial announced on Thursday local time that it will launch a data service for paying users to provide customers who follow market dynamics with "the fastest authorized access" to real-time posts posted by US President Trump and other leading accounts. It is reported that the Trump family is the largest shareholder of Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT), a listed company that operates TruthSocial.
The company that operates the social media platform Truth Social announced on Thursday local time that it will launch a data service for paying users to provide customers who follow market dynamics with the "fastest authorized access" to real-time posts posted by US President Trump and other leading accounts. It is reported that the Trump family is the largest shareholder of Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT), a listed company that operates Truth Social. Trump’s account on Truth Social, @realDonaldTrump, has the largest number of fans on the platform. As of Thursday, the account had 12.9 million followers. Trump often prioritizes releasing official statements on Truth Social, so the account has become an important source of information for Wall Street institutions and news media to track the president's policy trends. When DJT announced the service, called "Truth API," it did not directly mention the president himself in a press release. But the company hinted that there may be demand for such services from Wall Street institutions. "The market is already volatile based on posts on Truth Social, and we expect the Truth API to become a significant and ongoing revenue stream for the company," DJT interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in a press release. And this is indeed the case. Whenever Trump releases important news on Truth Social, global capital markets often fluctuate accordingly. A company spokesperson also said that the service will push content posted by the 10 most influential accounts on the Truth Social platform to customers, and the speed will be significantly faster than the push notifications ordinary users receive on the Truth Social platform. "Previously... information agencies that focused on tracking influential Truth posts relied primarily on manual monitoring. The Truth API will bridge this information gap." The launch of Truth API is DJT’s first time getting involved in the data authorization business. This move has opened up new revenue channels for the company. Previously, DJT faced challenges in scaling up its media business due to fierce competition in the field and the dominance of large social media companies. Virginia Canter, a lawyer at the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund, said: "This is a huge conflict of interest issue. Trump has an obligation to deliver information publicly to the American public, and now he is distributing this information through a private channel in which he is one of the major shareholders." Canter added that Truth Social has become "a de facto presidential press room." Providing APIs to paying customers is not the first initiative of Trump Media. Other social networks have already pioneered this path. Wall Street has a long-standing need for low-latency information flow. Hedge funds and other financial institutions usually use the data interfaces provided by social platforms to quickly obtain information that may affect the market. These institutions can use real-time data as well as historical post archives to build algorithmic models for analyzing market sentiment and capturing trend changes. However, unlike other social platforms, Truth Social is also the main channel for the President of the United States to release official information. Trump often releases the latest decisions on major issues such as the Iran war and tariff policies through Truth Social, and this information may directly affect financial market trends. Truth Social was launched in 2021. Its establishment background was that Trump's account was suspended by X and Meta's platform Facebook after the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure documents, Trump himself holds approximately 114 million shares of DJT, accounting for approximately 42% of the company’s total share capital. After winning the presidential election, Trump transferred those shares into a revocable trust established in the name of his son, Donald Trump Jr. (