Some on the web scoffed at this idea while others just scratched their heads. The idea of giving away gossip and rumors for free does not sound like the web 2.0 way to me. What possible reason could someone have for breaking a story on Truemors as oppossed to their own site? Breaking news on your own site allows you to profit off of that rumor. What does Truemors give you?
Interestingly enough, Truemors does give you something. It gives you exposure and link juice.
What? How does this work?
- It’s realy quite simple as there are multiple ways to get your gossip/rumor/news on Truemors:
- 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.
Now that we know how easy it is to post on Truemors can you give me a reason why I would use the service?
As even the worst of spammers know, getting people to come to your site is the first hurdle. In fact, spammers attacked Truemors in full force as soon as it went live! A good amount of moderating set everything in order and the spam is now removed in a timely manner.
Truemors also follows in the steps of Twitter in that the posts are not very long. The posts are just long enough to post a rumor and a link.
Think about that. A rumor and a link.
Do you see where I am going with this? Look at all of the big social news sites as they are right now. There’s nothing more than a link, a headline, a summary and a discussion. Well, Truemors took the headline, link and summary and merged them all together. Discussion is also there but I have not yet seen any comments left.
How does this help you? If all of the good things a blogger needs for social bookmarking are there and no one uses the comments section (I hear so many bloggers complain that social news sites get all the comments) you have the ultimate traffic source!
Let’s look at what Truemors offers you again:
- A link back
- Traffic if your rumor/gossip is good
- A site that will not steal your comments
Will the next “Watergate” break on Truemors? Not likely. Will the next “Watergate” be linked to from Truemors? Yes, very likely!
Also, Truemors uses an IP logging system to track voting. This is good and bad. It is good in that the casual user can not simply clear their cookies and vote again but it is bad because if you are behind a corporate firewall then you probably share the same IP as all of your co-workers!
The average spammer could quickly change their dynamic IP and vote up a rumor while a corporation would be unable to vote down a rumor due to their static IP. It is a minor issue but it does need to be pointed out. With so many people using home networking where one IP address is shared among many PCs I can see some folks wondering why the site tells them they already voted even when they have not.
