Guy Kawasaki's start-up Truemors debuted last month to mixed reviews. The site, designed to combine gossip with social networking, was beset by spam, and many doubted whether there was a viable business model.
(Credit:
Truemors)
Now Kawasaki, who came to fame as an "evangelist" for Apple has broken down exactly how much time, effort and money it took to set the site up. As it turns out, he says, for $12,107 and 7.5 weeks of labor, you too can have a Web 2.0 business.
Kawasaki says the point is that new technologies have made it that much easier to start a business. "No entrepreneur can tell me that he needs $1 million, four programmers, and six months to launch this kind of company. With products like WordPress, MySQL, and Salesforce platform, things are a whole lot cheaper and easier these days," he wrote in his blog.
But others say that the site was coasting on Kawasaki's name and that the breakdown doesn't really work for unknown players.
Blog community response:
"What really bugs me is that I'm not sure Guy has created anything at all--at least not anything of value--and therefore the entire thrust of his post is completely undermined. What he should really be saying is 'How I Wasted $12,107 On a Site That Serves No Purpose.'"
--Mathew Ingram
"He isn't shy about pointing out his long term pay it forward plan and the stating of the obvious when it comes to his popularity and the advantages it brings. You probably don't have this popularity, so plan on a few bucks to get above the noise and assume Techcrunch is going to ignore you. And because you aren't him, have somewhat of a plan regarding how you're going make some coin on the gig."
--The post Money Value
"There is one lesson that may have come out of all of this. When you spend several decades building up a reputation in an industry, it's perilous to cheapen your brand with unplanned, get rich quick experiments--especially when the core of your business is telling tech business people how not to make the same mistakes we saw over and over again during Web 1.0."
--Epicenter
Truemors, a new social information site from former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, went live this week, but has suffered some early growing pains.
The site is sort of a combination of Twitter and Digg; users can phone, text or e-mail in rumors, and they're posted to central page. Then other users can vote them up or down.
While the launch of Truemors was widely anticipated, opening day didn't go entirely well. Spam posts quickly appeared on the main site, and bloggers wondered whether its lack of focus would hinder its ability to find a community.
Blog community response:
"Of course, there's no such thing as bad PR on the blogosphere. Well, except silence. That's the most damning thing of all."
--Scobleizer
"There's a lesson here. The site had no focus, and thus no community. A moderator is also a good idea for such sites, because otherwise spam will prevail. There may still be hope for the "greatest" section of the site, where the most popular posts are ranked, and thus presumably only the best material is sifted. When we last looked, however, the top post was about how terrible Truemors is."
--VentureBeat
"I like the idea of truemors but they are launching very broadly. Digg became popular based on focusing on a tech niche to start (and it may be stuck there as it tries to expand). Truemors launches with ten different categories. The content may be too varied to appeal to any distinct audience."
--TechCrunch
- prev
- 1
- next
