By Owen Thomas, 10:05 AM on Mon Dec 31 2007, 2,311 views (Edit, to draft, un-top, Slurp)

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Few outsiders understand the degree to which the Valley is driven by data. Even your guilty pleasures — like this gossip rag. After Google Reader introduced a feature which tracks users' most-browsed RSS feeds, people have come up to me and confessed that — mathematically, statistically — Valleywag is their favorite blog. They're loathe to admit it, but the data reveals it. That's why I'm not going to do a year-end list of my favorite stories. Instead, here's a list of Valleywag's 20 most-read stories. You may pretend to be high-minded world-changers, but you're really into Facebook, babes, datacenter meltdowns, Google, Kevin Rose, geeks behaving badly, fired Gamespot editor Jeff Gerstmann, and anything written by Nick Douglas. Here's the list. (Click through to see how many pageviews each one got.)

1. Bank intern busted by Facebook
2. Vlog Hot: Babes Semifinals Heat 1
3. A drunk employee kills all of the websites you care about
4. The Console Wars, animated
5. The $160 billion typo
6. Facebook employees know what profiles you look at
7. Digg users take revenge on girl who dumped beau via Facebook
8. Kevin Rose cracks his iPhone
9. "I'm feeling lucky" button costs Google $110 million per year
10. The Genius Bar can help you only so much
11. The seven most annoying things about the future
12. GameSpot editor (?) on fired reviewer
13. Fark founder accuses Fox newsman of hacking
14. Screenshots of first Googlephone app
15. The shortest domain name ever
16. If everything were sold like iPods
17. 10 most embarrassing geek photos
18. NY Post outs Lucy Southworth, Larry Page's girlfriend
19. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht in iPhone line on CNBC
20. All technology came from sticks