Guy Kawasaki's Truemors Gets Acquired By NowPublic

Truemors, a rumor site launched by Guy Kawasaki in May 2007, has been acquired. The buyer is NowPublic, a "participatory news site" that we covered last year when they raised their second round of financing. Kawasaki is joining the company's advisory board as well.

The terms of the deal aren't being disclosed, but my guess is that it's very likely to be a tiny acquisition. Truemors remains a niche within a niche, with flatish traffic.

Now if Kawasaki can sell his other experimental startup, AllTop, I'll be impressed. Its so awful its kind of cool.

NowPublic ( http://www.nowpublic.com/), the world's largest participatory news network, today announced the acquisition of Truemors ( http://www.truemors.com/), a website dedicated to the free-flow of the news rumor mill, and the brainchild of venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki. In the immediate term, Truemors will continue to operate as a standalone site. Guy Kawasaki will join NowPublic as Chair of the Advisory Board, and, the editorial team of Truemors will remain intact. "Truemors is exciting in that it puts trust in those on-the-ground and in-the-know -- the perfect complement to NowPublic," said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic. "With the acquisition of Truemors, NowPublic's news reporting capabilities continue to expand. Our ever-growing eco-system of reporters is changing the way news is produced and distributed." "Truemors believes in the democratization of information -- access for everyone to everything -- as well as demonstrative technology -- products that enable the open exhibition and expression of information, emotions, and opinions," said Guy Kawasaki, Founder of Truemors. "NowPublic is the ideal organization to carry the Truemors torch, as it has long held these same beliefs and seen enormous success. I look forward to working alongside the NowPublic team as Truemors continues to thrive. Truemors was created to spread accurate information, enabling users to read, write, discuss and rate rumors posted by others. With Truemors, users are not required to be journalists, run websites or blog to "tell the world." Nor must users scan hundreds of sources to find the most interesting and useful information. Users can find and submit Truemors across a variety of easily accessible categories, including: Auto; Business; "Crap;" Entertainment; Gaming; Health; News; Odd; Science; Sex, Sports and Tech. Truemorists get paid per post that is accepted. About NowPublic NowPublic is a crowd-sourced, participatory news network that mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In its short history, the company has become the largest news organization of its kind with contributing reporters in more than 5,500 cities and 160 countries. The Guardian has named NowPublic one of the top five most useful news sites on the Web and Time Magazine named it one of the Top 50 Websites for 2007. The company has received funding from Rho Ventures, RhoCanada, Brightspark, GrowthWorks and members of the New York Angels. About Truemors The purpose of Truemors is to democratize and spread information. First, from a "citizen journalist/editor" perspective it enables you to "tell the world" -- within the bounds of good taste and the law anyway. Second, from a reader perspective, it puts you "in the know" about the latest news, rumors, and happenings, so that "you know better" without having to spend hours every day searching for information. Nononina, Inc. created Truemors. Guy Kawasaki, a founder of Nononina, is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and the former chief evangelist of Apple. Nononina also acknowledges the pioneering and inspiring work of Fark, Twitter, BoredAt, Digg, PostSecret, PopSugar, and HotOrNot.