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Truemors is live: Read the Mysterious Beta invite email, Revel in the SPAM

Welcome INQUIRER readers!

Glad you made it here, but don’t stop reading with Guy’s funny email (below) - please feel free to browse, or subscribe to RSS. Or check out some reviews: if you’re into collaboration, read up Collanos. Hot for social tools? Check out Cluztr.

Whatever the case, thanks for stopping by, and please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Guy Kawasaki’s widely discussed venture - Truemors - is live and alive, a day before the embargo was supposed to lift. I’m not going to go into it in detail, as that’s been done all over the place already - see TechCrunch, CenterNetworks cool Video Review, Mathew Ingram’s typcially insightful comments on the notion of community, or Frantic Industries’ assessment of the low barrier to competition here.

I will mention, however, that to me the name has always sounded to close to “tumors.” That’s a grim association, and one that’s proving all too prescient as the ability to post anonymously has run the site over with cancerous spam and gamed posts, and snarky shots at Guy. Do I think Truemors is a digg-killer? No. Is it a Twitter-killer? No. May it yet find an audience among the celebrity-gossip-perez-hilton-TMZ crowd? Alarmingly - yes. I wish Guy nothing but good luck.

SPECIAL BONUS: Also below you’ll find the email text received by those who responded to Guy’s original “Help Wanted” post - its pretty rambling and philosophical, and positions Truemors as the evolution of communication following the printing press, desktop publishing (on Apples, of course), and blogging. Sort of cringe-worthily funny given the way the launch has gone.

///// The Email:

Thanks for responding to the “Help Wanted” ad. Call me a romantic, but I
believe in the democratization of information–that is, access for everyone
to everything, so I’m creating a site called Truemors.

A long time ago royalty and religious leaders had scribes. Around 600 the
Chinese printed using negative reliefs. Around 1450 Johann Gutenberg,
combined hundreds of years of progress into the screw printing press.

Fast forward to 1985 when Apple (Macintosh), Aldus (PageMaker), and Adobe
(PostScript) produced “desktop publishing.” A few years later people could
create web sites. Then blogging appeared on the scene. Still, people needed
a computer and a blogging tool like WordPress or TypePad to disseminate
information. Not that Truemors is in the same league as Gutenberg, Apple,
Aldus, Adobe, etc, but now all that people need is a phone to “tell the
world.”

I also believe in demonstrative technology–that is, products that enable
the open exhibition and expression of information, emotions, and opinions.
Where democratization implies that the many can read the content of the few,
demonstrative technology enables the many to create content too. Thus,
Truemors is the melding of democratization and demonstration that enables
people to “tell the world.”

People can post their rumors, thoughts, news, opinions, celebrity sightings,
and personal greetings, and anyone with web access can read them within
minutes. I was inspired by Twitter, BoredAt, Digg, PostSecret, PopSugar, and
HotOrNot–mull that over for a few minutes–and wish to acknowledge their
pioneering work.

You can start by posting a truemor in any of these ways….

///// End Email

digg, guykawasaki, kawasaki, perezhilton, tmz truemors

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