Truemors

Truemors
Type of site
 User-created social media
Headquarters Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Owner Guy Kawasaki
Created by Guy Kawasaki
Website http://truemors.com
Commercial Yes
Registration Required, minimal

Truemors, is a user-created rumor reporting site founded by noted author and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki. The service launched in the middle of May 2007 to mixed reviews.

While its home page resembles many list-style sites such as Digg and Reddit, Truemors focuses on "true rumors" in a time-sensitive setting.

Launch

The service launched with some buzz, as Kawasaki has been a well-regarded author about entrepreneurship with not many startups under his belt. Of particular note, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch stated in a May 15 review, "I like the idea of truemors but they are launching very broadly. Digg became popular based on focusing on a tech niche to start (and it may be stuck there as it tries to expand)."

Writing two days later, Seth Godin said on his blog, "I disliked this project from the very first moment I saw the beta."

Some expressed their support for Kawasaki's efforts by posting comments to his personal weblog. Others such as Brian Lash, founder of blog-to-audio service Ch4tter, have expressed their support in the form of hopeful blog posts.

Guy has remained optimistic about his company's prospects. Responding to the former, he said, "Thanks for the kind words about Truemors! To put it mildly, there has been very few positive things said about it. But every company has to start somewhere, right?"

Whether it was good or bad press, a spike in traffic that earned it a top-10,000 Alexa ranking.

The site has been criticized -- both by the blogosphere and on its own pages -- for slow load times and chit-chat like posts that recall those Twitter.

Development for the site was unusual, as Kawasaki was proud to say it only cost US $12,107.09 by outsourcing all software development to a South Dakota firm, Electric Pulp . According to the site, two other firms provided services for the site but the cost for these services are unknown to date. Startup SpinVox provided the ability for users to post via voice calling, and mobile marketing firm GoLive! Mobile provided the ability to post via SMS text messaging.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/2/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.