Background
The purpose of Truemors is to democratize and spread information. We made it so that people don’t need to be a journalist or even run a web site or blog to “tell the world.” We also made it so that you don’t have to scan hundreds of sources to find the most interesting and useful information. Think of Truemors as a friction-free news site. Incidentally, posting a truemor and using our web site means that you’ve agreed to our Terms of Use.
Methods of Posting
There are four methods to post a truemor:
- Submit online. If you want to submit online, fill out this online form. Enter your name, email address, select a category, and enter your truemor. The name you entered will appear in the truemor. There is a 350-character limit here too.
- Text “2020 <whatever you want to post>” to 55022. There is a 350 character limit. The last four digits of your phone number will appear in the truemor.
- Call 1-650-329-2020 (20/20, get it?). You will hear a greeting that prompts you to leave a short (thirty second) voicemail. The magical technology at SpinVox will transform your voicemail to text and send it to our server for posting. Believe it or not, you can leave a voicemail in English, French, German, and Spanish. The last four digits of your phone number will appear in the posting.
- Send an email to post@truemors.com. Again, there is a 350 character limit. The two characters before the @ in your email address will appear in the post for example, sussinn1@gmail will appear as “n1@gm.” The first time you post via email, you will receive an email that you must confirm before your truemor is posted.
Content
Unfortunately, our idealistic notion to democratize information means that Truemors is open for abuse. We want “true rumors” that have news and entertainment value. We do not want profanity, pornography, bullying, libel, slander, advertising (more about this later), censor bait, or illegal activities. Here is a simple test to help you understand what our content policy:
Would you use something that you read on Truemors in a conversation by beginning with the question, “Did you hear that…?”
Here are examples to illustrate our policy:
- “Testing. Does this really work?” We leave these for a few minutes, so that people can see that our technology does work. Then we delete.
- “Guy sucks.” “This site sucks.” This is unimaginative crap. There’s no information or entertainment value. Our theory is that people who are forty years-old and still living with their parents post stuff like this.
- By contrast, “Seth Godin hates Truemors.” is good because people might not know that Seth hates Truemors. Thus, it stays. Even better, “The Inquirer thinks that Truemors is the worst site in the world.” stays too.
- “Macintosh is better than Windows.” This is old news—since circa the mid-eighties. “George W. Bush is clueless.” Also, not a truemor. People try to stir things up for the sake of stirring things up, but Truemors isn’t a discussion board so we delete posts like these.
- “MyOldspace is going to offer a social networking for old people.” This is a close call. As written, it’s closer to advertising and promotion than a truemor. However, with a little imagination, we’d leave it: “Did you hear that there’s a new social networking site for old people?” But make sure that it’s something new and different because we will delete “You can now buy books online” if it links to Amazon. :-)
- Here are some truemors that we liked (obviously now old news):
“BMW announced that it’s going to build a Mini Cooper that gets seventy-two miles per gallon?”
“Paul Newman is retiring.”
“Yoda is the most popular Star Wars stamp.”
“The US and Iran are formally meeting for the first time in twenty-seven years.”
“A guy who is trying to go to every Starbucks in the world.”
Links, Not URLs
We’d prefer that you “paste”/“insert” HTML links rather than provide URLs in your posts. Instead of this:
Paul Newman is retiring. http://paulnewmanlink.com
Do this:
Paul Newman is <a href=”http://paulnewmanlink.com”>retiring</a>?
If you don’t create links, we will usually do the linking for you. However, a link is a lot better for readers and for us if you can do it this way.
Length
We limit the length of Truemors posting to approximately 450 characters for two reasons: first, we want as many truemors to appear in a screenful of our web site. Second, we want quick, bite-sized synopses that are easy to grasp. Like PowerPoint pitches, the longer the spiel, the less you probably have to say. Think haiku, not essay.
