Gossip Blog Gives Silicon Valley the Celebrity Treatment

SAN FRANCISCO — Nick Douglas started his journalism career at a Christian college whose founders strove to "produce young leaders ... capable of pushing civilization forward."

"Geeks Gone Wild" probably wasn't what they had in mind.

Douglas, 22, chronicles the lifestyles of the rich and nerdy. He dropped out of Pennsylvania's Grove City College a semester short of graduation, moved to the musty basement of a purple Victorian here and in February began dishing dirt on the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.

Valleywag, his online "tech gossip rag," specializes in rumor, innuendo and biting commentary on the latest technology trends and the people behind them. It dares to presume that snapshots of Google Inc. founder Larry Page cuddling with his girlfriend on a private jet are as interesting as the next killer app he dreams up.

"You people in Silicon Valley are far too busy changing the world to care about sex, greed and hypocrisy," reads the site's welcome message. "But if you ever need a break, come visit us at Valleywag."

Some techsters hope the site will undercut the image of Silicon Valley as a place filled with pocket protectors and taped-up eyeglasses, where it's all work and no play for the people creating the next generation of gadgets and Web products.

"I don't know if I can say it's serving a need, other than endless human capacity for scandal and innuendo," said reader Lane Becker, an Internet executive in San Francisco. "It's prevalent in the political and entertainment worlds. Why not the technology world?"

Alas, Valleywag may do more to reinforce that less-than-charismatic image than to kill it.

Page Six it ain't. While gossip columns at the New York Post and other papers are filled with celebrity sightings and antics, Valleywag is gossip by a geek, for geeks.

The juiciest scoops include photos of a Yahoo Inc. executive's Mauritian vacation with his fiancee and a Google founder in his bathrobe, video of Tom Cruise arm-wrestling with Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel during the movie star's visit to the company's Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters and a news item about an Internet executive being tossed from a bar for bellowing drunkenly in a Scottish accent.

But Douglas is just as likely to post photos of shirtless, hairy, overweight bloggers or jokingly graft an executive's head onto a buff model's body for a poll on Silicon Valley's hottest denizens.