Owen Thomas, the Business 2.0 editor whom we've lured to run Valleywag, is all smiles. But don't be deceived. This Silicon Valley gossip rag, after he takes over in July as managing editor, will remain as obnoxious as ever. You see, Thomas isn't just a veteran of business journalism, with excellent sources in the tech industry (most of which he will burn). The superficially jolly writer was, in an earlier life, one of the contributors to Suck, the legendary site that pioneered web snark. Here's coverage on All Things Digital and Gigaom — Valleywag snags an editor from Business 2.0. After the jump, for the Valleywag-watchers, the highlights of my own seven months on Valleywag. And, this being a critical site, some lowlights.

LOWLIGHTS

• Facing the irate fans of Nick Douglas, after firing him as Valleywag editor
• Identifying Fake Steve Jobs, the author of the spoof online diary of the Apple chief exec, and getting it wrong
• Guessing again, and getting it wrong again
• Pretending to laugh off the anonymous diarist's use of the verb "dentoned" to describe a story fucked up
• Getting the scoop on the detention, by one of the Valley's most publicity-mongering execs, of a reporter — and nobody cared
• Hounding financially troubled Red Herring, and the magazine's incompetent publisher — and nobody cared

HIGHLIGHTS

• Pricking the ridiculous hype around Second Life, Linden Lab's virtual world
• Calling bullshit on the puffed-up stats of ad-hungry startups
• Tweaking Techcrunch's Michael Arrington
• Tweaking hyper-networker Auren Hoffman
• Tweaking 19-year-old guru, Ben Casnocha
• Making fun of the extra-curricular activities of Tim Draper, the singing venture capitalist
• Winding up Steve Jurvetson, the most thin-skinned VC of them all
• Calling on Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr to retire
• The obituary of Yahoo's Terry Semel
• Waving goodbye to Lloyd Braun, Yahoo's Hollywood boss
• Being called an "evil genius" by Fred Wilson.
• Being called simply "evil" by Michael Arrington
• Finding a picture of Larry Page's home on Google's new neighborhood walkthrough
• Getting a jump on Mahalo's launch, and funding, despite Jason Calacanis' efforts to mislead
• Tracking the hunt for the missing python at Google's New York complex
• Breaking the news that Myspace was acquiring Photobucket
• Breaking the news of Mybloglog's sale to Yahoo
• 23 and Me, Anne Wojcicki's new personal genetics startup
• And her engagement to Google's Sergey Brin, which Valleywag had first
• The accident-prone past of Sean Parker, Silicon Valley's bad boy
• Way more about Peter Thiel and his friends than the Valley financier can handle — and more to come, before I sign off
• Getting the best out of Nick Douglas
• And, hopefully, these stories had something to do with a surge in Valleywag's audience. et me toot my horn here for a minute, pageviews up 210% from October to May. [See below.]
• Handing over Valleywag, finally — it was beginning to feel like the occupation of Iraq, a quick one-month project, which turned into a costly long-term occupation, with no exit plan
• Handing over to Owen Thomas. The coverage of Silicon Valley has been a labor of love, as well as hate. It would have been hard to give up Valleywag to just anybody. Owen Thomas is the first person I ever approached about the job. And I hope he's the last.

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