Well, Guy Kawaski’s Truemors has debuted today.  My initial reaction to Truemors was violently snobby, and in fact, I was half a hair away from crafting a “Truemors is Teh Lamest 2.0!” type post. After taking a deep breath, however, I think the real angle on this story isn’t how lame Truemors is, but how, in fact it might succeed.

The low-down? Its a twitter-clone whereby anyone can post a “rumour” and then vote on it. Because of its Ajax-y effects, these one-line “rumours” are continually vascillating up and down based on the number of up or down votes (and other factors, I’m sure) that each rumour is getting.

Why did I think it was it Lame?

Only because there’s nothing special about it.

Successful web2.0 sites have to have some kind of combination of a) killer proprietary (or seemingly-proprietary) technology and / or b) an enthusiastic and willing community.

Truemors has neither. Yet.

I’m not going to dwell on the technology aspect of it, only because its so self-evident. I’m no programmer, but I think anyone with a passing interest in web technology can tell that this kind of site could probably be duplicated, in some fashion, with no great effort.

The key for Truemors, then? The community which, like any Web2.0 community, provides the actual secret sauce. After all, they provide the rumours that the site is based on.

Now, to be completely fair, it will take time to develop the latter. It always has. Digg wasn’t grown in a week, after all.

But what’s interesting — and I think the thing that really separates Truemours — isn’t its premise. Its the founder — Guy Kawasaki.

The real lesson here is when your web2.0 property is dependent on its community to create amazing, fascinating, have-to-return type material, it helps — a lot — to have someone to help drive that community’s initial usage, and eventually growth.

Guy Kawaski is a celebrity in the VC, Mac, and to a lesser extent, the blogging community. The very fact that he’s around and this is his baby is going to generate a lot of buzz. Some of it is going to be negative (that was my knee jerk response), but some is going to be positive. And after all the “Truemours is teh lame” posts die down (and similar “rumours” as its getting the butt kicked out of it with similar rumours), its going to have a much larger user base than it ever did if it had no one of any celebrity or notoriety at the helm.

Truemor’s premise isn’t bad, after all.

One-line rumours with a link to something substantial to support it could be appealing. But *only* if you were able to create a community which was some mixture of being a) savvy b) connected or c) intentionally, or unintentionally, amusing.

Furthermore, you could see that all it takes is for a single rumour to actually *become* true for the the mainstream blogosphere / geekhood, or even the mainstream media, to pay attention, create bongo bongo traffic, and have the whole thing explode.

After all, its almost like Truemors is trying to capture news that is so far “upstream” that it isn’t even news yet. Its almost like Truemours is trying to “outscoop” social news by reporting on news that isn’t even yet news.

But the real key, as I say, is in its community. And the real learning point, if Trumors takes off, is really how important celebrity is to driving the creation of said community.

Where would Digg be, after all, if Kevin Rose of G4TV, hadn’t been at its helm? Sure, it *might* have still succeeded, because, for example its technology was the first — but its trajectory would have been a helluva lot slower. Or, it might have died on the vine, for lack of interest in such a tool.

Where would Netscape be, for example, if not for Jason Calacanis spear heading *that* social news project?

Sure, there are a multitude of other web2.0 projects that have had some measure of success in spite of not having someone notable at the helm, but for many projects that have an “average” type premise, who are utterly dependent on community to make those projects happen — how many would benefit from the endorsement, sponsorship, or otherwise patronage of someone notable?

If they’re like Trumours, I suspect, they would benefit a great deal. A great deal.