What — “You Know Better”
The purpose of Truemors is to democratize and spread information. First, from a “citizen journalist/editor” perspective it enables you to “tell the world”—within the bounds of good taste and the law anyway. Second, from a reader perspective, it puts you “in the know” about the latest news, rumors, and happenings, so that “you know better” without having to spend hours every day searching for information.
What Not
You can read our Terms of Use for more detail, but simply stated we’re not interested in crap. Some crap is easy to recognize: profanity, pornography, bullying, libel, slander, and advertising. (If you see any of this, please email us.) Some is not so easy. Take gossip for example. The best definition that we’ve found of gossip is:
“…evaluative social talk about individuals, usually not present, that arises in the context of social network formation, change, and maintenance…” Rumor Psychology: Social and Organization Approaches by Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia.
By contrast, the best definition of “rumor,” also from Rumor Psychology, is:
“…unverified and instrumentally relevant information statements in circulation that arise in contexts of ambiguity, danger, or potential threat and that function to help people make sense and manage risk.”
The content that we want are true rumors that are relevant, informative, and interesting. Reading them would make them a person more interesting. Gossip, by contrast, is less urgent, less useful, and almost always deals with people’s private lives. In other words, if we wanted gossip, we would have called our site “Truessip” or some such drivel.
Why
First, call us romantics, but we believe in the democratization of information—that is, access for everyone to everything. A long time ago royalty and religious leaders had scribes. Around 600 the Chinese printed using negative reliefs. Around 1450 Johann Gutenberg combined hundreds of years of progress into the screw printing press.
Fast forward to 1985 when Apple (Macintosh), Aldus (PageMaker), and Adobe (PostScript) produced “desktop publishing.” A few years later people could create web sites. Then blogging appeared on the scene. Still, people needed a computer and a blogging tool like WordPress or TypePad to disseminate information.
As Steve Jobs would say, “There must be a better way.” Not that Truemors is in the same league as Gutenberg, Apple, Aldus, Adobe, etc., but now people just need a phone or web access to tell the world.
Second, we also believe in demonstrative technology—that is, products that enable the open exhibition and expression of information, emotions, and opinions. Where democratization implies that the many can read the content of the few, demonstrative technology enables the many to create content too. Thus, Truemors is the melding of democratization and demonstration—and you thought it was just a web site.
We’d be thrilled if the next Watergate story broke on Truemors. We’d be happy if you read Truemors every day, and it provides tidbits that you can use to impress your friends, colleagues, and relatives. If you ask, “Did you hear that…?” and you find out that you heard it before they did, Truemors worked. Like we say, “You know better.”
How
You can post your information on Truemors in four ways:
- Call 1-650-329-2020 and leave a voicemail. SpinVox will translate your voicemail to text and send it to our server. Incidentally, you can speak in English, German, Spanish, and French. Your message, however, will remain in the language you spoke.
- Text “2020 <whatever you want to post>” to 55022.
- Enter your message in this online form
- Send an email to post@truemors.com. FYI, this is a SpamArrest-protected email address, so you’ll have to confirm your address.
We haven’t figured out how to let people democratize and demonstrate pictures and video yet, but we’re working on it. Actually, we know how to do it; we’re simply afraid that people will democratize and demonstrate too much if-you-know-what-we-mean. When you see pictures and video here, someone inside Truemors (that is, a “truemorist”) did the posting.
Actually, this means there is a fifth way to post: Become a truemorist. This means we’ll give you an account so that you can create, edit, and delete using a browser or a tool like MarsEdit, Qumana, or Ecto. If you’re interested in becoming a truemorist, please send us an email.
Who
Nononina, Inc. created Truemors. The three founders of Nononina are Guy Kawasaki, Will Mayall, and Kathryn Henkens. Guy is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and the former chief evangelist of Apple. Will is the former vice-president of engineering of Garage Technology Ventures and ACIUS. Kathryn has been a bean counter at too many places to list here. We also acknowledge the pioneering and inspiring work of Fark, Twitter, BoredAt, Digg, PostSecret, PopSugar, and HotOrNot in this field.
Where
You can contact us at:
Nononina, Inc.
3300 Hillview Avenue, Suite 150
Palo Alto, CA 94304
650-354-1854
info@truemors.com