[jfengel]

Building it is easy. Getting people to subscribe to it (creating an account, downloading an app, etc) is really, really, really hard. So is getting them to check it often enough to not forget about it.

Social networks are natural monopolies. You go where your friends already are. Once there, you tend to stay there, rather than going through the whole process again on some other site.

In this case he appears to have half-assed it. It's not impossible that his following was devoted enough to jump through those hoops. He'd have needed a catchy app and a constant stream of content to make it engaging. Maybe a whole Twitter clone ecosystem might have done it, but that comes with a ton of headaches. (Even the free-est speech platform doesn't like being overrun with spammers, for example.)

Instead, he seems to have counted on his notoriety to do all of the work, and that was surely not going to cut it.

[tinus_hn]

But if he just creates a platform where he can post his short screeds and people can view, subscribe and interact, surely his followers would want to install an app for that? You don’t even need accounts if all you want is read and get notifications.

Perhaps his followers are less enthousiast than they appear on tv but surely installing an app has to be less of an effort than putting down a sign or joining a protest march, right?