Even though gossip sites each have their own unique qualities, the names dished about often remain the same: Lady Gaga, Lindsay Lohan, Brangelina. Valleywag is particularly unusual among gossip blogs in that the names gossiped about on this site aren’t necessarily household names to most celebrity watchers: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Barry Diller.
Helmed by the blog network Gawker Media, Valleywag’s focus is on news and rumors about the men and women of Silicon Valley. Typical Valleywag headlines of the past include “Mark Zuckerberg Got Served –but Why?” and “War of the Nerds: The Battle Over Wikileaks.”
Valleywag is credited with breaking some big celebrity news stories, including the leaking of a sex tape featuring rocker Gene Simmons, but the focus is more frequently on tech bigwigs. In the site’s very first post, a relationship between Larry Page (Google’s founder) and a female employee was made public, closely followed by the revelation of CEO Eric Schmidt’s open marriage.
Anyone who doubts that Silicon Valley gossip can be as tawdry as Hollywood gossip can look to the story Valleywag featured on Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, accusing him of accepting sexual favors and donations in exchange for positive edits on the Wikipedia site.
In 2007, Valleywag reported one of its most popular stories of all time, that of a bank employee whose missing-work excuse was discovered by his boss on Facebook. A popular early Valleywag feature paired up Silicon Valley notables (though not usually notable for their looks) against each other in contrived beauty pageants.
As part of Gawker Media, the parent company that helms Gawker, Gizmodo, Jezebel, and Fleshbot (plus several others), the content on Valleywag is licensed on a Creative Commons attribution-Non-Commercial license, allowing for reuse on non-commercial blogs with proper citation.
