Trump's widely-mocked new blog shows he is now just 'shouting into the void,' say social media experts

• Donald Trump's new blog shows he is now just "shouting into the void," since being banned by Facebook and Twitter, say experts.
• Trump has struggled for attention since the bans announced in January.
• "A challenge for Trump is that the most effective online engagement requires interaction," said Peter Loge, a communications expert.

Former President Donald Trump's new "communication platform" launched this week was widely mocked as little more than a "glorified blog."

The site - revealed on Tuesday - followed Trump's longtime adviser Jason Miller promising that Trump would soon create a social media platform that would "completely redefine the game" on social media.

Instead, Trump's new site, which is attached to an existing website used to sell Make America Great Again merchandise, merely contains short blocks of text and little interaction, making it more reminiscent of a political blog from the mid-noughties.

Nu Wexler, a former Google and Facebook executive and Democratic operative, tweeted simply: "He's launching a blog."

Miller has since insisted that Trump's new website is not the social media platform he has spent months hyping and that this will still emerge "in the very near future."

However, the fact that Trump still has to communicate with his followers via statements posted to his own website illustrates the scale of the challenge he faces in gaining a fraction of the attention he enjoyed before he was banned from social media platforms.

Trump has struggled for attention since he was kicked off Facebook and Twitter in January in the wake of the Capitol riot on January 6.

The drop-off has been dramatic: The media intelligence agency Newswhip found that social media interactions about former President Donald Trump have fallen by around 91% since January.

Trump's campaign had initially resorted to mailing out tweet-length statements which would make their way via journalists onto Twitter and into news reports.

And while his new communications site represents something of an upgrade from that, the absence of truly interactive features on his new blog means he is going to continue struggling to generate anywhere near as much internet attention as he did on the mainstream platforms.

"A challenge for Trump is that the most effective online engagement requires interaction," Peter Loge, associate professor school of media and public affairs at the George Washington University, told Insider.

"Fans want to feel as if they have a relationship with their favorite celebrity. These "parasocial relationships" are what keep fans coming back and buying more stuff," he said.

"At this point, Trump is just shouting into the void. He isn't letting anyone shout back.

"Shouting at people is a less effective way to maintain celebrity status and keep selling new merchandise than finding ways to create the illusion of interaction is."

There are, of course, some benefits to Trump launching a one-way communications platform rather than a fully-fledged social media network.

Alex Stamos, the former cybersecurity chief at Facebook, tweeted a meme mocking Trump's new website, which pointed out Trump's campaign wasn't obliged to moderate any user content if he didn't have any users.

The move also ensures that the attention remains solely on the former president himself, Peter Loge said.

"He is not writing for other outlets, participating in others' panels, or joining any other organizations," he said. "Trump is promoting Trump on the Trump blog on the Trump website ... Trump's blog appears to be reaching the people he wants to reach and doing what he wants it to do."

Nonetheless, it will likely be the decision of Facebook's Oversight Board that will have the most decisive hand in determining the viability of a potential 2024 run for Trump as far as social media is concerned.

While Trump's Twitter ban is permanent, his Facebook suspension is indefinite, and the Facebook Oversight Board's decision this week to prolong his suspension for another six months raises the prospect that he could, in theory, be back on mainstream social media within the year.

That may prove to have a bigger impact on his political fortunes than any new "communications platform" he chooses to use in the meantime.