Introducing Trump Media & Technology Group
Former President Trump revealed plans for the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG). His plan, apparently, is to copy Facebook and Twitter and Google and Microsoft and Amazon and …
Even for him, that is pretty ambitious.
TMTG News would be a competitor to CNN – but also to Fox and OAN and all of the other conservative media that have given him a voice over the last 5 years. I guess it is payback time.
Another part, call Trump Social, plans to compete with Facebook and Twitter, similar to what GETTER and Parler tried to do.
One slide in the pitch deck says that there is a long term opportunity to build a TMTG tech stack that competes with AWS, Google and Azure. And also competes with Stripe.
Also Netflix.
It is immediately being listed on the NASDAQ using a SPAC, a popular reverse merger tool that allows companies to go public with a very thin review. The difference between investors in TMTG and people who buy Trump hats for $40 is that the investors expect a return on their investment and they are very fickle.
The things people should consider before investing in TMTG. Trump has a history of bailing when things get tough, leaving the investors high and dry. He has filed for bankruptcy at least 6 times and that is just the casinos. Other operations like Trump airlines and Trump steaks and Trump wines just went away.
Personally, I think competition in this space is great. I hope he is successful.
But companies like Facebook and Amazon have spent billions of dollars and have some of the brightest minds in tech. If he thinks they are going to lie down and let him roll over them, I think he is mistaken.
They also have massive patent portfolios and they might choose to follow his own history and sue TMTG into oblivion for patent infringement.
Still, the battle will be interesting and we should watch what happens.
Companies like Facebook and Google have laid their own undersea transoceanic fiber optic cables to obtain cheap bandwidth. Netflix alone represents something like 33% of all bits on the Internet. I doubt his competitors will be willing to sell him space on their fiber.
Reports from people who have seen previews of Trump Social (actually they hacked it since you can’t sign up for it yet, which is not a good sign) say it is just a repackaged version of Mastadon, a free, open source social network framework.
If he is successful, even if it is only to a degree, it could mean even faster innovation and lower prices for consumers and businesses, which would be great.
Currently, Google competes with Microsoft, Amazon competes with Walmart. More competition is better.
Stay tuned.
Credit: Vice
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