The secret startup Guy Kawasaki has been working on will be called Truemors, a source tells us. The site is currently password protected, but Kawasaki has recently posted on his blog saying he’s looking for “people who are in the flow of interesting and true rumors.”
The service will be a “rumor reporting bulletin board with twitter-like capabilities.” Look for a launch later this month.
A screen grab of a cached version of the site (more here):
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Is there really a large enough supply of true rumors that are interesting to make this feasible? It seems like you cover most of the ones in the tech world on here…
If there is little control on the site, it’s just going to degenerate into a rumor mill and the signal to noise ratio will plummet.
cool
This startup’s gotta be gold… cause… what is gold… Guy touches!
I think Guy is finally going to take on Valleywag;)
isn’t this techcrunch + valleywag and subscribing to Michael + whoever through twitter now?
Sounds interesting!
I am pretty sure that Guy will bring something new!
- no second techcrunch or so…
hmmmm….guy better hope that this venture will break his streak of failed investments at garage.
Guy; really?
All the pitch’s you hear, and this is the kind of thing you want to attach your name and valuable reputation to…another mean, hurtful, hateful gossip site/company?
Really?
ps Techcrunchers (crunchies?). Git ‘em whilst you still can: At this moment, Falsemors.com and Liemors.com are both still available.
The only reason this might work is Guy Kawasaki’s name being attached to it. The whole idea depends on being able to generate useful and interesting rumors. There are only a handful of people in position to hear things like that and he’d have to have a bunch of them posting to the site.
Though admittedly it only takes on really juicy rumor to put a site on the map for good. Just ask Matt Drudge.
I think another thing this makes me think about is possible NDA violations and these “rumors” sabotaging deals. Say I’m an employee (just a developer and not an executive or anything) at a company that’s about to get acquired by Yahoo (like I was at RightMedia). I could literally overhear something then post it on truemors. That could screw up the whole deal and leave lawyers at both companies VERY pissed off. Guy could end up getting subpena’d for ip addresses :-X
Google: http://www.google.com/search?n.....tnG=Search
you would think Guy would be able to spend him time and energy doing something good for the world - this sounds like just another way to feed his ego
Call 1-650-329-2020 to leave a truemor (I’ve just tried, it works).
Latest: I saw Guy Kawasaki at the Stanford Park Hotel.
Cash from rumors. True or not. Potential to ruin lives and reputations all on one board! Great idea, Guy.
Some false truemors, thanks to http://209.85.129.104/search?q.....&cd=21
- Hiking the Berry Creek Falls trail. 10 miles round trip.
- Sports category test.
- Hi this is a test of this service. Thank you.
- The S swell is gone and the NW has backed down. Slower day in the waves.
- In a corp jet (Citation 3) flying from Detroit to Bowling Green
- Michael Snyder, the CEO of Vonage is resigning. How about the patent
attorneys?
- Comcast is going to acquire Fandango.
- testing category
- I saw Guy Kawasaki at the Stanford Park Hotel
- Apple is shipping the iYaiyai soon
- Testing online submission
- Zsa Zsa Gabor is the actual biological mother of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter, Dannie Lynn.
- Hi, this is Me saying I think I must have seen Alan Ripman in New York, sweeping the streets. Very strange.
- Achtung! Verstehen Sie auch, diese Pfosten sind verboten. Sie sind sehr schmutzig. Allen Deutschländer sollen doch verstehen.
- This is only a test.
- I saw Jade Jagger at the Russian fashion week show.
- Hi, the weather & Redwood City, California on Apr 9th is fantastic, it should be a gorgeous day & we’ll look forward to seeing this on the blog site. Thanks now. Bye bye.
- Hi, this is the surf report from Pleasure Point. Today we have a mix of NW & SW probably about head high, tomorrow the S increases to over a head.
- A Mitsubishi Eclipse and a black SUV got in an accident on 101, southbound, at 237.
The site isn’t entirely password protected. I just pulled this off the site:
Nononina, Inc.
Palo Alto, CA
650-354-1854
Email us
You’re right Nivi, that’s Guy’s phone number: 650-354-1854
So here is my first truemor: I’ve just called Guy Kawasaki and he told me that Google is going to acquire Truemors for $1.6 billion. Don’t repeat it, there is a NDA
Shitty name - sounds like tumors…maybe it’s rumors about people with cancer?
you gotta be kidding me. Another gossip, what? website? from a well known, who? self claimed entrepreneurs who has never succeeded in starting any successful company in 20+ years “entrepreneurial” career built on a lucky stumble on other’s success? (i.e. Apple).
And he called it secret? come the f* on!
JUST LIKE POWERSET.COM!
it say Truemors is million dollar funded by Garage.com :p
This is funny. I just heard the word Trumors on an old episode of Totally Rad Show.
Oh, I think it’s going to do really well. Guy’s a cool cat.
It’s The Smoking Gun meets Twitter meets Web 2.0. Throw in a little Guy and you have something that will have value as long as you can find twenty real insiders who have access to valuable rumors.
Also, I guess you need to worry about just how anonymous you get to be while submitting these factoids. WikiLeak eat your heart out.
“Throw in a little Guy and you have something that will have value as long as you can find twenty real insiders who have access to valuable rumors.”
Twenty real insiders with no professional or personal stake in preserving the secrecy of the rumors, that is …
Truemors will have some novelty value and will then devolve into astroturfing central, except the beauty of it will be that the people with a vested interest in leaking rumors will get a kickback for the leak! How’s that for double dipping?
Wow, how boring and what a bad name. I don’t think Guy has ever founded a real company and his investment record is poor as well - and tumor or whatever is sure to maintain this record.
Reminds me of Seth Godin and squidpoo or whatever it was called
these guys should stick to writing books and pretending to be somebody they aint.
He wants to start a Gossip site.. and wanted some photographers who would be interested in taking pictures of celebrities.
For once I don’t need to comment because my fellow commenters have done the bashing for me.
Truemors - DOA.
I can see how this MIGHT work, but I don’t think it will. The novelty of knowing “Paris Hilton is at Ivy right now” or “I just saw Rupert Murdoch at Pure” is only going to be interesting for so long (assuming you’re interested at all).
And I agree that the inherent problem is that if this reaches a mass audience, the noise will no doubt clutter out the signal.
I see a pattern here: pump up a company’s products while they suck at the time (Apple) to pumping up rumors that might be true (Truemors). Where’s the substance?
- Yeah if We keep letting people get funding for sites that are about - nothing.
- it will help the bubble2.0 (which has seemed to stop appearing..) but that means we are probably just ignoring it more
Guy Kawasaki = feminized mangina
Who-hoo!! Just what we so badly need, another rumors site :/
–
We Will Create Your Very Own Domain Name - http://PowerNamer.com
Congrats, Techcruncher Stephen Wilton; you snapped up Falsemors.com
Liemors.com is, however, still avail for registration. Anyone?
Actually, this kind of stuff is already pretty huge online and travels around a lot of the message boards and online communities, particularly in entertainment and fashion, and obviously it’s also happens in tech. I can see politics working for it too. The success of it is going to depend on the feet on the street he rolls out with, but he posted something on his blog and I’m sure there’s been interest. In a single week of living in L.A., I probably see 6-10 famous people and get invited to a lot of events, there are tons of other people that already see and post things online, etc.
I’m biased because I know and like Guy, but I know this niche pretty well and I think it has some legs. Media (like Us Weekly, In touch, etc.) always look for this kind of stuff (star sightings, etc.), so I bet there’ll be some interest/traffic there.
Is this how low we’ve sunk? How noble for the world of democratization of the web that some of its supposed (self-supposed?) elite decide that the killer app is a gossip column. How sad.
I saw it mentioned above, but this was definition the title of one of the first episodes of Alex Albrecht’s new podcast, Totally Rad Show. I’m not suggesting Guy is a listener, but the two things do kind of coincide, and the audience for TRS is pretty big given all of the jump-over from Diggnation.
Truemor: Guy totally stole this idea from a podcast that was using the word as a joke.
I LUV 2 SOCIAL NETWORK! THE WORLD IS SO CONNECTED! WHAT A GREAT PLACE!!!
That’s pretty Gay, Guy.
This publisher’s syndicated content was recently unavailable so FeedBurner cannot present it at this time. Isn’t this a violation of one of Guys 10 ways to have a lousy website? (no RSS feed)
This may not be anything new, a rumor mill, but neither is making money. The US Weekly, Entertainment Tonight, and that lowbrow crowd will make this a featured site. Why should Guy and others leave that money on the table? If you had thought of it and had the brains to pull it off you would have.
Rather than bad mouth it, you should go and do something better. If you can’t then just stew in your bitter grapes.
- Brezhnev is alive in an underground vault in Albania
- IBM is going to buy Apple
- Shrek 4 will be directed by Ralph Bakshi
- Space is full of virtual particles, continually destroying each other
- SciFi movies are an alien construct, to prep us for the real invasion
- A Clockwork Orange was filmed at a Los Angeles daycare center
- Paris Lohan is going to visit Tibet with Richard Gere
- The Hobbit screenplay will be written by Bob Barker
- The Luxor Hotel backpack bomb was meant for Al Pacino
- Orthodox Catholics are Prelapsarians
- John McCain was injected with the DNA of Ronald Reagan
- Al Gore is preserving his DNA for the post-global warming era
- Time magazine is really a biblical decoding - one chapter per week
- Dark energy is in the 5th dimension, less than an inch away from us
- The statue, The Awakening, is being roused out of bed and moved
Rumor: Powerset is the next big thing.
Truemor can be of anything…wallstreet is going to be a big client, hollywood, and of course our techworld.
Did you know that: The Bush Gov is going to kick out all the Indians - out of the Valley, as they have started making money….. spread this story.. and dont forget to get Arnold on your side..
I am truly disappointed in Guy’s gig. I was even telling my g/f - about Guy ( who originally thought that Guy was perhpas that guy who wrote: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance).
Here is why I am sad:
A> In Art of Start : Guys says ” As VCs we are disappointed when entrepreneurs talk about eye-balls, P2P .. etc etc - followed by “there has to be MEANING”.. GUY, come on PLEASE explain, how: spreading rumors ( true or false) contributes to MEANING? IF you disagree: try this : There are some very true rumors going on in the other side of Atlantic that ‘9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy” and YEah - they fit your format : “Did you know - that no Jews died in 9/11 ..” !! Come on Guy.. Brahmins have a higher responsibility. You can’t say “: I am sad at those entrenreneurs who … ” and yet.. do WORSE than the dot com .. boo.com ! did !
B> You are GUY K. Not some ” desperately-seeking-18month-and-cash-burning-garage-rent-ticking-guy”
C> being your fan. I am just.. well.. I will save that..
Ajay
It doesn’t look like Truemors has taken off. Good idea Guy, perhaps it needs more investment