What happens when evangelists are put upon to turn their air castles into actual product? Truemors, possibly the best example you will ever see of a site built purely on back of Web 2.0 hype, buzzwords and the peril of believing that your Technorati ranking equals a strong business sense. To be sure, there are few individuals in Silicon Valley more affable and full of positive energy than the site’s creator Guy Kawasaki, so this hurts me just as much as it may hurt him, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Truemors is D.O.A.
Built with the notion that combining the models of Digg, Twitter and Gawker might yield a home run, Kawasaki has forgotten the central tenet of any good startup: You must have an undying passion for your business in order for it to succeed and grow. Following this well-known axiom we can assume either Kawasaki has a secret passion for tons of daily gossip we never knew about; Kawasaki has some gossip blog star waiting in the wings to lead this thing; or (more likely) Kawasaki was hoping his raw passion for technology would keep the site afloat.
Kawasaki posted a help wanted ad for the site just last week, and he just bought the domain name on March 10, so you’d be excused for thinking that maybe, just maybe, this idea of his was hatched far too quickly and with little long term planning.
You think I’m being too harsh? Mike Arrington has the screenshots. In addition to the absolute hilarity of thinking that mashing up the right widgets is enough to gamble your evangelist cred on, there’s the matter of legalities. Any site whose sole purpose is to trade in wild rumors submitted by anonymous visitors better devote at least half its budget to a team of veteran attorneys. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like the site will get that far.
Photo: Marcn
