Valleywag FAQ

1. What is Valleywag?
Valleywag is a tech gossip rag, focusing mainly on the people and stories of San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

2. But Silicon Valley's far too dull and serious for gossip.
Yes, that's been the general consensus. Chris Nolan used to write a gossipy column, Talk is Cheap, for the San Jose Mercury News in the 1990s, and Fucked Company provided dirt on all the startups that went bust after 2000. But Silicon Valley hasn't been conducive to gossip. And a lot of the people who work in technology are, at least in up markets, too dazzled by the immaculate future to pay attention to the grime of the present. The less charitable explanation: the companies are uptight; the public relations professionals controlling; and the press supine.

3. So, why start a site?
Well, where there's money, there's excess, and where there's excess, there's gossip. And there's now a lot of money again in Silicon Valley. Oh, and let's not forget Google. Did you know that Marissa Mayer, the anointed queen of Google, used to go out with Larry Page until quite recently? And no one ever ever writes that. So that's why.

4. What stories will you cover?
Well, Marissa Mayer, for a start, and the tech media's obtuse coverage of her background. Unpopular venture capitalists. Larry Ellison's spending habits. The Googlejet. Car park etiquette. The cubicle neighbor's undeserved Porsche. Particularly nauseating examples of corporate jargon. Any story, pretty much, that people talk about, but never see in print. And nothing is too trivial.

5. Who's writing the site?
The writer is Nick Douglas, a hungry little monster who first visited San Francisco just three months ago, plucked prematurely from undergraduate English. Jane Austen's loss is Silicon Valley's gain. Or maybe the other way around. But Valleywag is also open to reader comments, either anonymous or bylined.

6. How can I become a commenter on Valleywag?
Check out the Valleywag comments FAQ.

7. Who's behind the site?
Valleywag is part of Gawker Media, which publishes other gossipy titles such as Gawker in Manhattan, Wonkette in Washington, D.C. and Defamer in Hollywood — as well as tech sites such as Gizmodo and Lifehacker. The company makes money from advertising but not, fortunately, from many of the companies that we'll be poking.

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