A New Social Website

Have you heard the term Web Democracy?

I heard Guy Kawasaki, the former evangelist for Apple Computer, mention his new baby, Truemors, and he called it "Democratizing the Web". I'd not heard of that expression, so I checked it out. At first, yet another social networking site. But I had to dig deeper. Basically, I see Truemors as being kind of like Digg, but more social (not just tech/geekspeak). You can become a Truemors blogger or journalist through their system, and thus then become a contributing member of their system. I'd consider Truemors a new type of social website.

Guy built Truemors with very little investment other than lots of time and staking his name on it. Initially, he received some negative press. However, I'll point out that press garnered over 300,000 page views within ELEVEN days! I wouldn't mind negative press that send that many visitors to ARRiiVE, because I'm sure most of those visitors left feeling like Truemors has a voice and a place on the Web to accomplish their vision: democratizing the web.

The idea is to share information, and to share it freely, across multiple categories. "But, isn't that what we're already DOING on the web?" you might ask. Well, yes, and no. When I dug deeper into what is going on with Truemors, I think it is more about the QUALITY of content than mass sharing of content. During the initial launch, there were 450 posts. Of those, roughly half got deleted for being "crap" posts.

I can't blame Guy for that, at all. In moderating a group on Advanced Collaboration at Plaxo, I have found that roughly 50% of all posts into the group are either non-related, unfocused blogshares, or spam. In other words, crap. I've been criticized for moderating my group at Plaxo, but my point is this: what value is a group when posts are filled with UCE, SPAM, poorly written messages, and other crap? Wouldn't you rather have a group moderated for high-quality content? To which, I'm now starting to get some kudos and applause from the group. My hope is that other members will join me in helping moderate the contributions to the Advanced Collaboration group in a positive manner. My own goal in creating Advanced Collaboration was to build a collective platform to contribute, gain ideas, and eventually promote what I'm working on over at Semantic Collaboration.

Although Truemors claims to be unmoderated, the truth is that Truemors is HIGHLY moderated. In order for Truemors to claim quality, they have to be. I, for my part, think that Truemors may succeed. I feel the same curiosity around it as I did when Steve Jobs invested in Pixar. And, we all ought to know how that ended up for Steve (Pixar was purchased by Disney for $7.4 Billion). That's a cool $3.7 Billion dollars in value for Steve Jobs. Not bad, huh?

Not only that, but he gained a seat on Disney's board, which means he can steer future direction of that stock's performance, too, and gain leverage to integrate more Apple-related solutions into Disney, which will help Apple's performance, too. Now, how will this pan out for Kawasaki? My gut tells me that he'll sell it when he feels it reaches such a critical success that someone larger, like Time Warner, might come in and purchase it for billions.

I'm still learning about Truemors but my initial impression is that this site advanced social websites with a more intellectual bent, an "NPR for the eyes," as Guy calls it.

Kudos to you, Guy. Please keep me informed as to how it goes. Heck, I might even post a little there, myself.
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Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

Copyright © 2007 ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. Truemors is Copyright © 2007 Nononina, Inc. ARRiiVE Semantic Collaboration, Apple, Pixar, Time Warner, and Guy Kawasaki are trademarks of their respective owners. No infringement intended. You may republish this article only if you publish in WHOLE with the COPYRIGHT and ALL ACTIVE LINKS intact.

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