NowPublic, the participatory news site backed by Rho Ventures and Brightspark, has acquired Guy Kawasaki’s Truemors.com, the companies said Thursday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mr. Kawasaki had boasted that he built Truemors, a Palo Alto, California, site launched in 2007, for about $12,000.
NowPublic, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, will operate Truemors as a stand-alone site “in the immediate term,” according to a news release and Mr. Kawasaki will chair NowPublic’s advisory board.
In an interview with Red Herring in March, Mr. Kawasaki, a venture capitalist and former Apple evangelist, characterized Truemors’ progress as “neither great nor bad.” He said the site was getting about 10,000 visitors a day.
On his blog, Mr. Kawasaki said Truemors.com went live 7 ½ weeks after he registered the domain name. Mr. Kawasaki said he spent only $12,107.09 to launch Truemors compared to the millions entrepreneurs got to “try stupid ideas” during the dot-com era.
Truemors asks its contributors to help “democratize and spread information” by avoiding pure gossip but submitting “true rumors.”
Some recent headlines on Truemors include: “Google Buying Jahjah?”; “How to Save Your Life with a Lunchbox,” and “Teens Turn Cicada Carcasses into Jewelry.”
Some top stories on NowPublic included:”U.S. sending air power to Afghanistan”; Sarkozy to blame for Royal’s break-in?” and “Car running on home-brewed hydrogen.”
While news organizations from the TV networks to The New York Times tighten their belts, NowPublic claims “thousands of reporters in over 140 countries.” The company said it had more volunteer reporters covering Hurricane Katrina than most news organizations “have on their entire staff.”
NowPublic competes against citizen journalism sites like Associated Content and OhMyNews. Some of those startups, including Bayosphere, a local news site created by former San Jose Mercury News reporter Dan Gillmor, have sputtered and died.
In July 2007, NowPublic closed a $10.6 million series A financing round from Rho Ventures, Rho Canada, Brightspark and the Working Opportunity Fund, managed by GrowthWorks Capital.