Ang Peregrino Recommends 22: Truemors

True­mors
URL: http://​true​mors​.com/

True­mors is one of Guy Kawasaki’s web projects. If you don’t know Guy Kawasaki, read this first. Many of you from this part of the world would be inter­ested in the fact that Guy is one of the first–if not the first– Mac­in­tosh “evan­ge­list”. Back in 1984, when Mac was not the Mac we know now, Guy focused on cre­at­ing pas­sion­ate Mac users and advo­cates of the Mac. The effects of that are being felt today.

You have to admit that the name TRUEMORS really pops. It is ded­i­cated to the free-flow of inter­est­ing & true rumors. It’s one of those names where you kick your­self won­der­ing, “Why didn’t I think of that name first?!”

The site is like a com­bi­na­tion of Twit­ter and Digg; users can phone, text or e-mail in rumors, and they’re posted to the cen­tral page. Then other users can vote them up or down. Once rumors are on the site, other users can leave com­ments and vote it up or down. Like Digg, all new post­ings are listed for peo­ple to review and vote on. If enough peo­ple think a rumor is inter­est­ing, it makes it to a top list (the equiv­a­lent of the Digg home page).

True­mors is divided into sev­eral cat­e­gories for a more orga­nized and demo­c­ra­tic (i.e. choose what kinds of rumors you want to read) site: auto, busi­ness, sports, tech, sex, and even a cat­e­gory called CRAP which includes true­mors such as “Well-Balanced Break­fast: Choco­late Cov­ered Bacon”, and “Lon­don Smells Like Manure”.

Build­ing the TRUEMORS site is a story in itself: Guy spent $12,107.09 to build the site, which is a pit­tance in the indus­try for a site as suc­cess­ful as it is. It was up in a mere 7.5 weeks after the domain name TRUE​MORS​.COM was brought. There were 261,214 page views on the first day with 14,052 unique vis­i­tors. There were 405 posts/truemor sub­mis­sions that first day. 3 hours after it went up, the site had to close down tem­porar­ily because it was hacked. Two days later, the Inquirer called True­mors “the worst web­site ever”, which resulted in 246,210 page views, and prov­ing once again that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

For another way to democ­ra­tize infor­ma­tion and make it avail­able to every­one, and for the really inter­est­ing news sto­ries from around the world that will prob­a­bly not reach the front page in other news­pa­pers, AngPere­grino Rec­om­mends TRUEMORS this week.