Benzinga - by Chris Katje, Benzinga Staff Writer.
One of the most volatile stocks in recent months has been Digital World Acquisition Corporation (NASDAQ:DWAC), a SPAC that announced a merger with Donald Trump's media company back in October 2021.
One of the phases of growth for Trump's media company could spell potential trouble for another Trump-linked company.
What Happened: The merger agreement between Digital World Acquisition Corporation and Trump Media & Technology Group faced multiple setbacks and has a current deadline of March 8, 2024.
The original SPAC presentation for the deal included ambitions for the Trump media company to expand beyond its Truth Social platform and also offer video platforms that could take on the likes of Netflix, Disney and YouTube.
It shouldn't come as a huge surprise that Truth Social is now testing streaming platforms.
A recent filing from Digital World Acquisition listed the company growth strategy for Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).
"TMTG also plans to grow Truth Social through the addition and refinement of user-friendly features — including the integration of video ± and continued global expansion," the company said.
Listed under "Increase Product Offerings and Service," the company said it would continue to grow cutting-edge products for Truth Social.
"TMTG has conducted extensive technological due diligence regarding, and begun testing, a particular state-of-the-art technology that supports video streaming and provides a ‘home' for canceled content creators, and which TMTG is exploring with the aim to incorporate into its product offerings and/or services as soon as practicable."
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Why It's Important: The growth of video and the launch of streaming on Truth Social could be potentially bad news for Rumble Inc (NASDAQ:RUM), a technology and advertising partner of Trump Media & Technology Group.
"Rumble looks to have new competition from none other than $DWAC," Culper Research tweeted recently. "DWAC disclosed for the first time that it has begun testing a new video streaming service which would provide ‘a home for cancelled creators.' Sounds familiar…"
Culper Research also showed that DWAC registered vstream.truthsocial.com, which shows popular video content.
Culper Research and several others have issued short reports on Rumble.
"$RUM is already cooked, but this may be fuel to the fire."
Rumble stock has risen in recent months, linked to high volatility around stocks that are beneficiaries of Trump and his dominance in the race for the GOP nomination in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump currently hosts his videos for events such as campaign speeches on Rumble. A recent Las Vegas speech shared four days ago has 621,000 views on Rumble. The last four videos shared on Trump's Rumble account each have over 500,000 views.
Trump has 2.14 million followers on Rumble and 6.9 million followers on Truth Social.
While it's possible that Trump would continue to share videos on Rumble in the future, he could also choose to make them exclusive on Truth Social.
Trump was unbanned on X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022 but has only posted once since the un-ban, despite having a significantly wider reach with over 87 million followers.
Along with facing potential competition from Truth Social, Rumble also has the risk of X with Elon Musk now in control of the social media platform.
DWAC, RUM Price Action: Digital World Acquisition shares are up 6.22% to $40.31 on Thursday versus a 52-week trading range of $12.34 to $58.72.
Rumble shares are down 0.47% to $6.82 on Thursday versus a 52-week trading range of $3.33 to $11.25.
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