Can we start keeping a bar chart of how many Valleyway articles mention Second Life, each day?

Can we start keeping a daily tally of how many daily entries mention Second Life? Maybe a bar chart? That might be more interesting at least...

I thought the AOL one would get people's attention. Calacanis, where are you?

Anyway, I'm most curious what people think about the Amanda Congdon predix [#28]. No, I don't care how much you love or how much you hate her -- put you whack taste aside and try to guess if the show will catch on.

And since I'm publicly talking to myself, can I just say a Conde Naste purchase of the Gawker Network in which Wired Digital takes over the whole operation is pure gold? It gets Conde Naste online, it gives Wired a true digital presence and a place to grow, it skyrockets the legitimacy of Valleywag/Gawker/etc.

I sorta doubt this actually will happen, but from a media biz perspective it makes complete sense.

There's one big and unbridgeable difference between Gawker and Conde Nast. They throw Oscar parties for Hollywood celebrities; we're happier crashing. What makes you think we *want* legitimacy?

Oh, by the way, Rex: how did you do with your 2006 predictions?

Well, fucking horrible. But the accuracy is never really the goal -- it's more about creating alternate universes that seem completely plausible.

And I was hoping that 2006's whithering nostalgia for Spy hadn't rubbed off on you! Sure, this "authentic" outsider angle presses the flesh and fleshes the press ("don't sell out" still somehow captures eyeballs), but everyone wants their recognition, even if it's off-character (off-brand?) to even give a modicum of acknowledgment.

But hey, I hope you don't answer the phone when Charles Townsend calls -- I sorta miss Spy too.

"There's one big and unbridgeable difference between Gawker and Conde Nast. They throw Oscar parties for Hollywood celebrities; we're happier crashing."

Besides breaking the gayometer with that statement, I hope no one misses the fact that Denton is in the business of selling bridges to suckers. There are plenty of gullible buyers on both sides of the river. They line up everyday. If you're reading this, you're one of them.

Take an honest look at Gawker Media these days. "Authentic" was purged from the style guide long ago and "selling out" means thank you very little to a multi-millionaire and his trust fund sidekick.

The reality is that Gawker Media sold out a long time ago by turning gossip coverage into the "commodity data" of Web 2.0. It's all churn and burn by numbers now. His properties don't stand out, loyal readership is falling, even if search generated traffic is on the rise, and it's all been primed for the big mainstream sell-off. If he doesn't cash in during 2007, then he wasted a lot of time devaluing a brand to make it more valuable.

Here's my prediction: he'll sell off Gizmodo/Lifehacker/Kotaku (they make a nice package under the consumer tech tree) and Jalopnik/Gridskipper to, I dunno, Triple-A or some shit. He'll keep the gossip blogs to throw parties, which are frankly much better when you're crashing them.

When's there going to be a Valleywag party?

Last year at this time, I made my annual Predictions for Media/Tech/Pop, which somehow even squeaked a bit of praise from Frau Denton. As I wrote in a comment in that Valleywag thread, accuracy is never the goal of these things -- it's more about creating alternate universes that seem plausible.