Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Valleywag’s bleeped headline yesterday is a tease, and so is Valleywag.

“F— you, Yahoo,” the rag’s Managing Editor headlines. Just like Owen Thomas can’t muster up the courage to go all the way where it counts in yesterday’s over promised, but underdelivered, supposed “scoop,” he buckled under Google (or Google fan boy) pressure in his inaugural attempt at Valleywag slumming: “Susan Wojcicki’s Big Lie.”

CNBC correspondent Jim Goldman reported on Thomas’ massaging of his first Valleywag “expose,” based on two not so hot sources, 1) public Google press releases from 2003 and 2) a USA Today reporter’s story published last week.

While he still maintains the gist of what he reported, and that Wojcicki “lied” about creating AdSense, he is changing his post to clarify the timeline of AdSense’s development. He says Applied Semantics released its version of AdSense in Oct. 2002. Five months later, Google unveiled a “copycat” version of its own, very similar software. And one month after that, Google acquired Applied Semantics and then named its system AdSense.

Thomas, though, is apparently not being upfront with Valleywag readers; The post contains no notice indicating any changes/corrections/modifications/updates following original publication. Surprising, given Thomas’s extensive editorial experience.

Thomas’s shock and awe Facebook headline today is also backed up by not so exclusive material: A publicly posted Facebook job notice.

What other “headline” scoops has Thomas dazzled Silicon Valley with at his new Valleywag gig?

“Jason Calacanis has no friends at Google” How so? A screenshot of Google AdSense ads served at Mahalo, bolstered by a Google PR statement.

“Google, Yahoo start from scratch” How so? A reposting of another Website’s reposting of a public screenshot of a Google sponsored student educational project, from eighteen months ago.

“Only half our users hate us” How so? A one paragraph “critique” of eBay CEO Meg Whitman, based on Bloomberg reporting. 

“Hello and Goodbye, Mahalo” How so? An Alexa screenshot.

Will it soon be “Ave atque vale, Valleywag”? To quote Thomas himself:

Bloggers are actually rather dull. People with something to say are intetresting. But actual ideas, knowledge and journalistic ehtics, alas, don’t come as part of the standard WordPress install. No wonder people are getting bored.

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