Truemors Launches
Truemors, Guy Kawasaki's new startup, opened to the public about an hour ago. — We covered them last week when we were able to get into the beta. Truemors is a rumor reporting site. Users text, email or call in a rumor and other users vote on it. Popular rumors make it to the home page.
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch got a screenshot look at Truemors in private beta just last week, and today Guy Kawasaki's rumor site is open to anyone. The pitch: users text, email or call in a rumor, other users vote, and winners reach the home page — no editors in the loop.
The launch landed widely for a small startup: franticindustries framed it as 'Reddit, only for rumors,' VentureBeat reported it 'smothered by spam' within hours, and Deep Jive Interests read it as proof that 'celebrity is important' for Web 2.0 launches. It also slots into an older TechCrunch thread on vote-driven aggregation — the Memeorandum Hunters debate of early 2006 was about exactly this question of who curates the news stream.
First-order effects
- Anyone can now submit a rumor by text, email or phone call, and the community's votes — not Kawasaki or any editor — decide what reaches the home page.
- Kawasaki's personal brand is now attached to a live, open-input product, so every spam entry and false rumor published under his name lands directly on a reputation built over decades of writing and speaking.
Second-order effects
- VentureBeat's same-day report that the site was 'smothered by spam' means moderation becomes the immediate operating cost, forcing Truemors to choose between open input and signal quality within days of launch.
- The instant Reddit-for-rumors framing puts Truemors in competition with established vote-aggregators for the same submit-and-vote audience, so its differentiation rests entirely on the rumor niche and multi-channel intake.
Third-order effects
- If Deep Jive Interests' reading holds — that celebrity, not product, carried this launch — the structural lesson for Web 2.0 is that a known founder's audience can substitute for a marketing budget, while tying the product's fate to one person's reputation.
- Vote-curated rumor streams push the industry further toward community moderation over editorial gatekeeping, raising the standing question from the 2006 aggregator debates of who bears responsibility when unvetted claims get homepage distribution.
The trend: Consumer news aggregation is shifting from editor-curated to vote-curated feeds, with founder celebrity increasingly doing the marketing work that launch budgets once bought.