The Social

New York-based blog network Gawker Media continues to trim its staff after a big layoff round in October, MediaBistro reported Tuesday. A few more members of the editorial staff have been let go, and a few others have been downgraded to part-time employees.

"It's all part of the austerity plan we announced a month ago," Gawker Media founder Nick Denton said in an instant-message conversation. He added, "I don't make any apologies: we're going to need as big a cash pile as we can accumulate."

Denton has been particularly bearish on the fate of ad-supported media companies in the face of industrywide cutbacks, suggesting that online ad revenue may drop a full 40 percent and responding with fierce cost-cutting. Company revenue is strong--up 39 percent in November, Denton said--and traffic continues to grow. The company has a history of dealing with underperforming titles by simply selling them or shutting them down rather than letting them bleed cash. It's a strategy that has been called both ruthless and prudent.

In the scandal department (it's Gawker, after all): One of the employees MediaBistro reported was cut, Alex Carnevale, allegedly cribbed part of a blog post from his personal blog last week, if smaller media gossip blog Jossip is to be believed. Denton, however, said that wasn't part of the rationale behind his departure: Carnevale had been a temporary employee, serving one month on sci-fi blog IO9 and one on Gawker.

"He did some good stuff, and I'd like to try him out again," the company founder said.

Of more interest to the tech blogging world, Gawker recently slimmed down its Silicon Valley scandal title, Valleywag, opting to fold the brand into a column on Gawker.com instead.

A correction was made at 9:54 a.m. PT: ThisRecording is considered to be a personal blog that Alex Carnevale writes for with several other contributors, not an employer.

On the same day that he published a detailed missive about his dire predictions for the online ad market, Gawker Media overlord Nick Denton made public his decision to shut down Valleywag, the blog network's Silicon Valley gossip title. Valleywag was launched early in 2006.

Valleywag editor Owen Thomas will have his job folded into a column on the Gawker.com flagship title, a gossip blog focused primarily on the New York media industry. Denton explained in an e-mail to CNET News that Thomas will remain full-time and that the Valleywag brand (as well as Valleywag.com) will stay alive.

Presumably, this means that Thomas' posts will be syndicated to Valleywag.com even though their chief destination will now be Gawker.com.

A recession seems like a great time to be running a gossip blog about the tech business, given all the juicy photos of sad, laid-off employees and rumors of badly-behaved CEOs mismanaging their companies that inevitably fly around. But the reason for Valleywag's shutdown was Denton's notoriously doom-and-gloom vision of the future--Internet ad spending will decline a full 40 percent, he predicts--and Valleywag was one of the company's less lucrative titles.

"Valleywag's traffic isn't enough to pay for two writers, even with Ketel One ads on every page," wrote Valleywag senior writer Paul Boutin, who will not stay full-time at Gawker Media.

It was a tough sell for advertisers, given its niche audience, and many tech companies would be hesitant to advertise on a publication dedicated to ridiculing tech companies. And then there was the fact that you just can't turn the average Valley exec or VC into a Perez Hilton-style celebrity. The likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk simply don't add up to Britney Spears-like followings.

Reactions in the tech community will probably be mixed. Valleywag is mean, to be sure, but it can also be hilarious, and writers Thomas and Boutin were tech-press regulars long before their Gawker gigs.

Denton's handling of Gawker has been frugal, continually consolidating resources toward the blogs that were pulling in traffic and ad dollars and not hesitating to shut down the underperformers. In April, Gawker Media sold off three of its smallest blogs, and Denton has now announced that another, Consumerist, is on the block.

Early in October, Denton orchestrated a personnel shuffling that saw 14 percent of the company's editorial staff laid off but new hires made at some of the most successful titles like gadget blog Gizmodo and feminist chronicle Jezebel.

Also on Wednesday, AllThingsD's Peter Kafka reporter that Gawker Media managing editor Noah Robischon was leaving for Fast Company.

This post was expanded at 11:51 a.m. PT on Thursday.

A freshly minted blog network called SportsBlog Nation (or SB Nation, as it calls itself) has secured a round of funding in the "mid-seven figures," Sports Business Journal reported Monday.

Jim Bankoff, who once served as chief of programming at AOL, put the round together and will serve as chairman of the board at SportsBlog Nation, which boasts more than 150 blogs, each one dedicated to a different college or professional sports team.

The funding round was led by Accel Partners, best known these days for having been an early investor in Facebook; partner Jim Breyer holds a minority stake in the Boston Celtics. Also contributing were Ted Leonsis, former AOL vice chairman and owner of the Washington Capitals; former Yahoo executives Dan Rosensweig and Jeff Weiner; football-player-turned-private-equity manager Brent Jones; investment bank Allen & Co.; and several executives from Providence Equity Partners, where Bankoff is an adviser.

The Washington, D.C.-based SportsBlog Nation has been in development for about a year, Sports Business Journal wrote.

The New York Post's Keith Kelly reported on Thursday that Jossip, a small New York-based blog network that operates a number of media- and entertainment-focused titles, is up for sale.

Kelly wrote that Jossip has hired investment bank Sperry, Mitchell, & Co. to explore potential buyer interest, though he cited a "wild rumor" that media giant Conde Nast may already be interested.

The blogs in Jossip's network include the eponymous Jossip, a New York-focused media and entertainment gossip blog; the Los Angeles-centric celebrity rag Mollygood; gay lifestyle title Queerty; and African-American culture blog Stereohyped.

It's not clear what kind of value Jossip would have to a buyer. The network's central blog has indeed broken notable stories--such as CBS Interactive's acquisition of Wallstrip. But it's still much smaller than chief rival Gawker, and the Jossip network is tiny, compared to Gawker Media, which operates more than a dozen titles, including some blogospheric titans like Gizmodo. Plus, the celebrity blog market is just about totally clogged.

The Post's Kelly reported that Jossip "is believed to be making money" but that founder and editor David Hauslaib suggested that he would rather pursue a joint venture or minority investment than an outright acquisition.

So for the time being, this bit of Jossip is...gossip.

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.

On Tuesday morning, tech gossip blog Valleywag posted a rumor that TechCrunch's small blog network might not be doing quite as well as its parent brand: Valleywag editor Owen Thomas said that gadget blog CrunchGear had made significant pay cuts and that at least one blogger had been fired. In a message to Valleywag, CrunchGear editor John Biggs attempted to clear the air, saying that some writers are "on hiatus" while the gadget blog works out its new ad sales program and transitions from a per-post model to a monthly salary.

Some blogging insiders, CNET News.com has heard, aren't buying Biggs' insistence that the CrunchGear kids are all right. Despite the star power and influence of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, CrunchGear still isn't in the same league as older hardware blogs Engadget (owned by AOL's Weblogs Inc.) and Gizmodo (owned by Valleywag parent company Gawker Media). Disclaimer: CNET News.com parent company CNET Networks also operates a gadget blog, Crave, which competes with all three of those titles.

But another source at CrunchGear, with whom I spoke on Tuesday afternoon, said that while there has been some reorganization, it shouldn't be considered an earth-shattering shake-up or an indication of failure at CrunchGear. "There are adjustments," the source said, adding that CrunchGear "decided to scale things back to a more core staff" and that "some writers were put on hold and some were let go as part of standard site growth."

He added that the site had reached a point where there were too many writers, and it seems as though something had to be done to clean things up and streamline operations. While the source would not go into detail on Valleywag's claim that CrunchGear bloggers had previously made $3,000 per month and it's now down to $1,500, he did say that "it's nothing drastic like that."

The rumor, as a matter of fact, may have had its roots in conversation that went on at last night's TiVo-Rhapsody party in New York, where representatives from multiple gadget blogs were present and alcohol from the open bar was flowing freely.

CrunchGear, which is largely based in New York, recently celebrated its first anniversary.

Rainbow-hued blog network Sugar Inc. is on one heck of a shopping spree: last month, the women's media company purchased social shopping site ShopStyle, and now it's bought fashion-centric blog hub Coutorture Media.

No financial terms were disclosed.

Coutorture, which will remain a standalone site despite the new Sugar affiliation, isn't a blog network in the traditional sense. The 230+ blogs that it counts under its trendy umbrella aren't officially run by the site, nor are they part of an advertising network like Glam Media; they're the fashion-related blogs run by Coutorture readers who have applied to become part of the site and run a chance of extra hits if their headlines make it to the front page. (Internet historians: Remember WebRing?) The main Coutorture.com site also offers original editorial content.

With the acquisition, Coutorture editor in chief Julie Fredrickson will stay at the helm, and co-founder Phil Leif will take on the role of Senior Engineer at Sugar Inc. The site, meanwhile, will be infused with technology from fellow Sugar buy ShopStyle.

Clearly, Sugar Inc. is pursuing an aggressive acquisition strategy here, and company CEO Brian Sugar indicated in a chat with CNET News.com that these deals are far from over. He also quelled any speculation that Sugar Inc. itself was for sale, a possibility that several bloggers have raised.

"This company is absolutely not for sale," he asserted.

Blog network Sugar Publishing, which operates a popular array of pastel-hued women's lifestyle and entertainment titles, has agreed to acquire social shopping start-up ShopStyle.com for an undisclosed amount.

ShopStyle, which competes with sites like ThisNext and StyleHive, aims to make it easier to search multiple retail sites at once and lets members create personal "look books" and network with other digital shopaholics.

In addition, the San Francisco-based blog network has officially changed its name from Sugar Publishing to Sugar Inc. "to better reflect its growing reach and expansion over the past year." Presumably, that's a move to indicate that Sugar considers itself more a community than just a blog publishing network.

Sugar was founded in 2005 as a self-funded operation between dot-com veteran Brian Sugar and his wife Lisa (yes, that's their real last name). According to a blurb on the site, "Brian started Sugar Inc. to keep a close eye on his wife, Lisa, and her obsession with Matt Damon."

Originally consisting just of celebrity gossip blog PopSugar, Sugar now includes about a dozen others like fashion blog FabSugar, gadget blog GeekSugar, fitness blog FitSugar and an overarching social network called TeamSugar.

The network now claims to draw in more than 5 million monthly unique visitors and is backed by Valley V.C. powerhouse Sequoia Capital and NBC Universal, which cross-links Sugar content with its iVillage property.

With the acquisition, Sugar is adding ShopStyle's purchasing capabilities to its shopping-focused editorial content.

ShopStyle widgets are already visible on several Sugar blogs. But ShopStyle, which Sugar fashion blog FabSugar describes as "essentially a search engine for clothes," has assured its readers that the original site will remain intact.

Could the company that brought you this cinematic classic manage to create a successful women's Web site network?

(Credit: National Lampoon)

Comedy house National Lampoon, which has brought the entertainment world everything from Animal House to the more recent Van Wilder, is courting the babes. A Media Week article details the brand's impending launch of 8228, the latest addition to the online National Lampoon Humor Network, which is a network of gossip and entertainment sites for a female audience.

We're guessing the tone will be a little different from TeamSugar or iVillage.

Expanding its Web presence is inherently a good move for National Lampoon: Van Wilder was a hit on DVD among the college crowd, but the once-iconic comedy brand has been largely eclipsed at the box office by such "Frat Pack" hits as Old School and Wedding Crashers, and more recently the phenomenon of Judd Apatow-affiliated "bromances" like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. And apparently, the Lampoon has thus far been successful in its digital initiatives--the formation of a network of college-oriented media sites, including the purchase of DrunkUniversity.com earlier this year, has helped to boost its Web traffic, and some viral buzz has ensued from a fake movie trailer about two dumb college students who pledge a frat called 'Alpha Qaeda.'

Launching a targeted set of "gossip and entertainment" sites for women, however, has the potential for disaster. Many female Web users just don't like being pigeonholed; Gawker Media's Jezebel blog has turned out to be a surprising success, but the company was walking a fine line by launching a brand specifically geared toward women. As Jossip puts it with regard to 8228, "We're thinking Animal House meets The Vagina Monologues. We're also thinking, 'This is National Lampoon's worst idea since Van Wilder 2: The Rise Of Taj.'" Couldn't have put it better myself.

In any case, let's hope they don't make it pink.