What is Parler?

You may have seen the rumblings around Facebook and Twitter, but in the wake of the election it seems like everyone is talking about Parler. What is Parler and do you as a small business need to focus on it?

Parler was started by John Matze and Jared Thomas in 2018 and has billed itself as the “free speech” social media platform. In response to what they deem “censoring” by some of the major social media networks, as well as data breaches and sales of user information, Parler was created to: “Speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being “deplatformed” for your views. Engage with real people, not bots. Parler is people and privacy-focused, and gives you the tools you need to curate your Parler experience.” (According to the Parler website).

One of the largest differences on the site is that they claim to not remove or ban content that may be inflammatory or proven false and instead leave the power in the hands of the consumer to decide what they want to see, or not see.

However, Parler does have very specific content rules on their site, including banning posts promoting pornography, marijuana, obscenities and even what they call “false rumors”. In fact, users have reported being censored for not following these guidelines.

Parler saw huge growth in 2020 when conservatives, unhappy with many social platforms fact checking tweets by Donald Trump, moved to the platform. According to the founders, Parler picked up even more users after the election, boasting over 4 million users.

So what does this means for you as a business? Is it relevant to you? I think it depends on your brand image.

It should be known that a majority of users on the site are conservative and use it to voice their political opinions. If this is against your personal views, or you try to distance your brand from politics, then it may not be the site for you.

Also, while growth in the site has been explosive recently, those actually using the site seems to be questionable. According to Mashable, a good portion of users aren’t posting often, if at all. For brands who are reliant on user engagement, theres still a lot to learn here.

Currently there is no advertising options or business profiles allowed on Parler, however, they have said they planned advertising on the site soon. They have also talked about an “ad matching” revenue stream, where advertisers would be matched with Parler influencers to post sponsored content.