For years, news publishers have relied on tips from their readers as a source for new stories; a new web startup from Guy Kawasaki that just launched, institutionalizes this approach by providing a forum for users to post "true rumors" - aka truemors!
What is it?
Truemors is an interesting site that combines elements of crowd-sourcing with the wisdom of crowds. A user can post a new truemor in a variety of ways: from the web site, via an email or text message or even from a cell phone (the site uses SpinVox for transcription). There is no user registration required; posting requires only a name (real or imaginary), email address and category.
Once the truemor is submitted, the social and digg-like behavior kicks in. Other users can react to the post in many different ways, using comments, links and social bookmarking; in addition, any user can submit a positive or negative vote for each post. With enough users acting responsibly, good posts should rise to the top. There is a Greatest section on the home page, which shows the truemors that have received the largest number of positive votes.
A screen shot of the site is shown below:
The image above illustrates one problem with this type of site: if you look carefully, you will see truemors posted by Michael Arrington and Charlene Li. How do we know that those were written by the real Mike Arrington and Charlene Li ?
Observations
The site has been in private beta for the past couple of weeks. I've found the site very simple to use - posting online is most natural for me, but I appreciate the many different posting options, which have the potential to draw in a large pool of users over time. Also, the site tracked my votes to prevent double-voting on any one item (although I doubt that its algorithms are strong enough to stop determined techies from gaming the system if they really try).
On the other hand, I haven't found the site particularly useful so far, but that's probably because the current pool of users is really very small. If usage increases significantly, then there is the potential for the truemors to be useful, especially since they're categorized; on the other hand, with increased traffic, doesn't the incentive for gaming the system rise, just like Digg?
Conclusion
My take? To be honest, it's difficult to see how this site in its present form, could compete with the already established Digg-clones (a la Reddit) or with Digg itself. And it could be as susceptible to gaming as Digg has turned out to be - if it becomes popular, how long before a SpikeTheVote appears for Truemors, before gangs of chain-truemorists vote up specific posts for fun and profit?
Having said that, I've been a fan of Guy Kawasaki for a long time - no doubt he has some aces up his sleeve! (You can read his vision for the site here.) It will be interesting to see where this goes in the future.
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