Valleywag confession: We're frigtards
Nick Denton, who still claims he's the world's greatest investigative journalist even though he twice incorrectly identified Fake Steve and swore both times he had me dead to rights, is determined to make a go of this Valleywag gossip blog.
Context & Ripple Effects
The feud between Fake Steve Jobs and Nick Denton has been running all year: back in July, FSJ gave a rare straight-faced interview to CNET while Denton was still hunting his identity, and Denton twice claimed to have unmasked him — and was wrong both times. Today's confession post is FSJ twisting the knife, mocking Valleywag's editor for swearing he had him 'dead to rights' each time.
The timing lands alongside Scobleizer's same-day tally putting Valleywag's hit rate at 17.3%, so the mockery rides a broader wave of bloggers quantifying the gossip site's accuracy rather than just complaining about it.
First-order effects
- Denton's position is now doubly exposed: he has been publicly wrong twice on his highest-profile story of the year, and the target himself is writing the takedown.
- Valleywag's editorial credibility takes a direct hit at the moment its Facebook reporting — the Zuckerberg cash-out scoops circulating the same day — is its main bid for legitimacy.
Second-order effects
- Rival bloggers gain a template: attacking Valleywag with data and satire (Scoble's percentage, FSJ's parody) generates more traction than rebutting individual posts, forcing Denton to defend the site's premise rather than any single story.
Third-order effects
- If accuracy-tracking becomes the standard weapon against gossip blogs, Silicon Valley media splits into two camps — sourced scoops judged on hits versus snark judged on traffic — and Denton is betting Valleywag can survive on the latter.
The trend: Tech blogging in late 2007 is shifting from anonymous snark toward accountability-by-mockery, where a site's error rate becomes the story itself.