Parler Generates Massive Audience Growth Since April

 By Howard Polskin, December 13, 2020

 Parler.com, the conservative-friendly social media website, has been an audience-building tear.  According to data supplied by Comscore, the audience has grown 1,659% from April 2020 to October 2020.   Comscore data about Parler is not available prior to April 2020.   

 In April, Parler attracted 119,000 unique visitors.  In October 2020, which is the month with the latest numbers available, the website drew 2,094,000 unique visitors.  In other words, in that time, Parler increased its audience by 1,975,000 unique visitors.  Parler’s surge can be attributed to its much less restrictive rules about what users can say on the social media site, which was a contentious issue during the recent presidential election.  Because of lax guidelines, conservatives such as Megyn Kelly, Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem have been flocking to Parler. 

 Other conservative-friendly social media sites are also beginning to generate traffic.  Rumble.com, which doesn’t have the same high profile as Parler, actually has more unique visitors.  In October, the site registered 7,030,000 unique visitors, which is more than double its traffic last April (3,283,000).  MeWe.com, which positions itself as anti-Facebook, is the smallest of the three sites I looked at.  It registered 852,000 unique visitors for October 2020, down from the 1,015,000 who came in April. 

 While competition is never a bad thing, the troubling aspect about the rise of these sites is that it facilitates the cracking of the American population into two distinct tribes with completely different values, beliefs and channels of information and communication.  In fact, it is likely to accelerate the division.  Whatever the flaws of Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants, at least they function as massive (and often unruly) town squares where users can listen to many different opinions in one central location.    

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