As New York's tech scene expands, Valleywag hires an Alleywag

The Gawker Media-owned Valleywag might tout itself as "Silicon Valley's tech gossip rag," but the effervescence of Bubble 2.0 has expanded far beyond Sand Hill Road. So far, in fact, that the San Francisco Bay Area tattletale blog--following in the footsteps of TechCrunch, which hired Business 2.0 veteran Erick Schonfeld last month--has picked up a New York correspondent.

The "Alleywag" in question is tech writer Nicholas Carlson, whom Facebook tells me is a 2005 graduate of Davidson College. Valleywag editor Owen Thomas confirmed to me that Carlson is a "newly hired associate editor" at the blog.

What does this mean for New York's tech scene? Expect more scrutiny of the online ad industry, something that's largely fallen under the radar on Manhattan media-gossip blogs like Gawker, Jossip and FishbowlNY--there's still enough dirt on the print industry to keep them busy. New-media advertising, meanwhile, has been a high on the agenda for the start-up Silicon Alley Insider (not to mention my esteemed colleague, reporter Elinor Mills.)

And with Google's expanding presence in Gotham, expect that to be a hot topic as well.