Twitter Wit, which was edited by Nick Douglas and sports a foreword by Biz Stone, is essentially a joke book.  Douglas collected what he believed to be "the funniest tweets of all time" and had them printed on a bunch of dead trees.  That’s kind of amusing by itself if you think about the pace at which life on Twitter moves; the book may become a must-have for ironic hipsters.

Then there are the quips within Twitter Wit to consider; they’ll make it appropriate for a lot of other people, too.  Douglas was the founding editor of Valleywag, and has written for Wired and Slate, so if you like that brand of sly, snarky humor, you’re liable to feel he’s put together a pretty funny volume.

Many contributions came from respected comedians like Stephen Colbert, Sarah Silverman, and Penn Jillette.  That publishing giant HarperCollins put out Twitter Wit might also qualify as an impressive endorsement.

One more interesting detail: Twitter (which doesn’t have any sort of financial arrangement with HarperCollins) treated everyone at its headquarters to a copy of the book.

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Date: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 from 6:00PM to 8:00PM
Location: Stanford University, Room 420-040 in the Quad (map)

From the vlogging/blogging community to seasoned entrepreneurs, our panelists have done everything from covering internet celebrity smut to running an adult luxury goods business!

Panelists will share their stories with us and talk about how and why they decided to do what they did – with topics such as getting started, getting funding, and how to run a successful business.
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What is Women 2.0?

Women 2.0 connects like-minded, motivated young women to swap energy, ideas, and experiences with each other. They promote the collaboration and growth of women in entrepreneurship, technology, and business and provide opportunities to interact with other successful women from a broad spectrum of industries.

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Brian Solis is principal at FutureWorks PR, an award-winning PR and Social Media agency founded in 1999. FW PR bridges the communications gap between companies and their customers, and between products and their specific benefits for their target markets. Solis blogs at PR2.0, http://www.briansolis.com, and regularly contributes to many industry trades. He is also frequently quoted in articles relating to technology trends and Marketing/PR strategies.

According to a memo from Gawker exec Lockhart Steele (is that someone’s real name?) that was posted by Dealbook at the New York Times, Little Nicky was given the axe because he a) refused to stop giving interviews; b) refused to stop acting like he was a big player in the Valley scene; c) refused to stop mouthing off about how he really wanted to get sued, or d) all of the above.

“Anytime a writer settles in too closely with the subjects he/she’s writing about, there comes the inevitable tradeoffs: favor trading, and an elevated sense of one’s own importance to the field at hand. Both, to some degree, ended up being the case here. We were also concerned by Nick’s repeated misunderstanding of the purpose of our sites.”

Meanwhile, Nick Denton has made up for lost time by taking a few whacks at Federated Media’s John Battelle, as well as InterActive Corp. supremo Barry Diller, who Nick suggests is a) gay (although married) and b) interested in young men. Oh yes, and then there was the wonderful Dave Winer and NakedJen item. So much for cutting down on the sex at Valleywag, Nick.

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Mathew Ingram is a
technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national
newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at
www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.

Personally, I liked the old look better and traditional valley reporters are abundant on the web. Oh well, I guess it’s all about the greenbacks.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Douglas responded to their request for a comment but only with a short on the record statement:

My only on-record comments are:
“I still like Nick Denton.”
“I’m wide open for job and gig offers.”

Nick himself has also issued a statement at Valleywag saying that he is indeed open to lunch (prefers Italian and suhsi and especially wine).

So what will Douglas do?

10 Zen Monkeys speculates that maybe Douglas was going to do a deal with Rocketboom or Amanda Congdon but dismisses both after tracking down Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon.

They also point to Nick Denton speculating that Douglas may be going to Wired.

As for Denton’s side of things. He’s still being pretty tight lipped about Douglas although he seems to have at least rolled back the decision to take Valleywag in the direction of the Courier font. As one Valleywag reader, Blackjack, commented yesterday, “IBM just called from 1955, they want their Courier font back.”

So the site seems to be in an easier font to read today and Denton says that he is creating a mirror site of Valleywag in the old layout for those who would prefer it. Nick responds to the rest of the criticism here. As far as comments on Douglas though, Denton is leaving it up to Douglas to give the story, “It’s up to Nick Douglas to explain, as much as he wants to, and I think he may be making a farewell post, or jumping into this comment thread. And you can quiz him.” Which of course subsequently has happened.

So the million dollar question still remains.

What will Douglas do next?

Dave Winer’s name keeps coming up. He says a little bird told him that Douglas was going to get into video. Although Andrew and Amanda could always be lying of course, let’s explore the other video options that could be out there to Douglas.

All of this of course is just wild speculation. I have no knowledge of what Nick’s up to. But… if he is going to work in video there are a couple of other avenues that could be considered.

1. Nick makes the jump to actual broadcast TV. One of the things I’ve been noticing a lot lately is that Hollywood seems to be creeping into the Valley. At the GigaOm Xing party in San Francisco last month I spent some time talking to a couple of guys from the Hollywood crowd. They had flown up here and talked about Hollywood being interested in figuring out how to filter out the best of user generated video for mainstream TV. It’s also interesting to see folks like famous producer/director Jerry Zucker, from Airplane and Naked Gun fame show up at the Vloggies the weekend before last. Hollywood certainly seems to be sniffing around, and the right tech celebrity gossip show could be just the thing for them.

2. PodTech. Since hiring Robert Scoble, John Furrier has been building a powerhouse video network. PodTech already has the snarky Geek Entertainment TV. But could they, would they, push the envelope enough for a Nick Douglas style show? I love PodTech. I love doing photowalking shows over there with Scoble — but is PodTech the network for a gossip video? I will say that Scoble mentions Valleywag a lot.

3. Revision3. In September I wrote about Revision3 being the future of TV. The Revision3 team is already collecting some of the hottest shows on the internet. They are the highest profile cutting edge video blog network out there right now.

4. Nick goes independent on YouTube. Now this would truly be the interesting angle. It would have very little cost. Nick’s got a reputation at this point big enough to launch his own show. Why should Nick share the wealth with a network on an ongoing basis when he can build independent content himself. By staying independent this also gives him flexibilty it structuring future distribution deals while building up his popularity. Eventually when he found the right VC money he could launch at his own site, move the show over there. Note to VCs, I’d give Douglas a call and see what he’s up to.

5. Nick becomes a catalyst for a blog network to break into video. I would have thought Weblogs Inc. an interesting play. Calacanis could add video to his empire and distribute it though Netscape and the Weblogs Inc. channels. Of course this already seems unlikely as Douglas already has had a snarky exchange with Calacanis over Calacanis calling Douglas “Little Nicky.” Of course… what if that snarky little exchange though were *actually* planned. Think about *that* for a minute.

Still, Douglas has gone after Calacanis before and Calacanis has an awfully large ego and even if there were potential there the ego thing could be problematic. Then again, business is business.

6. CNET. Unlikely, but should be mentioned. Two problems here. The first is that CNET has had their own business troubles and probably wants to deal with those without a Nick Douglas distraction — they probably would also worry about the reputation of CNET News being tied to a gossip video blogger.

7. Wired could also get into video which might be behind Denton’s comments. Certainly pushing video content through Wired’s distribution channel could be interesting.

More likely than not Douglas really truly actually has not made up his mind about what he will do next — which is why if I worked in venture capital or video I’d probably be taking him up on that lunch offer.

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Thomas Hawk is a San Francisco based photographer and technology writer.
He publishes the web site Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection and is also
the Evangelist and CEO of the photo sharing site Zooomr.

Nick the Elder – i.e., Nick Denton, publisher of Valleywag and founder of Gawker Media – has taken over writing duties and Nick the Younger (the former writer for Blogebrity that Denton plucked from obscurity) has moved on.

Where has he moved on to? No word on that – nor on whether the young lad with the rapier keyboard was shown the door (something Denton has a habit of doing with his online proteges from time to time) or left of his own volition. Although since we are dealing with the king of rumour-mongering, I would be remiss if I didn’t pass on a rumour that he was looking at joining a video entity of some kind, a rumour that Dave Winer was circulating awhile back.

According to Denton – in an interview with Bambi Francisco from Marketwatch – he wants to make Valleywag more about financial gossip instead of just “about sex in the Valley.” He tells Bambi “it would have been nice to get the Google-YouTube deal” or some juicy stories about potential startup acquisitions, and that he’s working on a juicy scoop about John Battelle’s Federated Media. He says that he wants to boost Valleywag’s page views from their current level of about 20,000 (which seems surprisingly small to me).

For more on the brief career of Mr. Douglas, check out an interview R.U. Sirius did for 10ZenMonkeys – in which he talks about Kevin “Tailrank” Burton’s personal life and psychoanalyzes Cory “BoingBoing” Doctorow, among other things – and also a profile in Business Week magazine. Thomas Hawk of Zooomr has some thoughts on Nick’s departure, and wants to know more about it, but I think he’s wasting his time. Nick Denton is the Zen master of PR.

Update:

If this post about John Battelle losing Fark from its stable of properties is anything to go by, I hope Nick the Elder sticks around and writes for Valleywag permanently. Not that I didn’t enjoy Nick Douglas, but it’s exponentially more hilarious to hear Denton talking about how his relationship with Battelle is “passive-aggressive” and how he thought his book on Google was “sycophantic.” Battelle puts up his dukes here.

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Mathew Ingram is a
technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national
newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at
www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.