Earlier this month, I had a chance to speak with editor/writer/ego-deflator, Owen Thomas of Valleywag. As a former calendar intern, I was lucky to work with Thomas last year on Valleywag and was glad to have an opportunity to reunite with my former boss. We met up in San Francisco’s beautiful North Beach to talk about Twitter, Gawker and what he thinks about the Los Angeles tech scene in this two-part exclusive interview.
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Dianne de Guzman: I’m amused by how journalists are embracing Twitter, using it as if it’s a serious reporting tool. I’m not so sure about that – yet surprisingly, many newspapers are embracing Twitter.
Owen Thomas: For journalists, I can see why Twitter is very attractive versus, say, an e-mail inbox. You can certainly direct message on Twitter, but the dominant mode seems to be people talking at you. Literally, at you. They use the “@” sign. If there’s some PR flack who wants to hit you up, they need to do it in public and be willing to risk the embarrassment of seeming awkward or irrelevant or clumsy. Then you can have these sort of light relationships with your readers – again, in public – giving material for your other readers, drawing a fan base and hopefully getting paid work. It’s so much less time consuming than dealing with all the e-mail you get. So Twitter is sort of a public version of your e-mail inbox.
The most interesting thing about Twitter is that it’s social, but it’s public — and in a group space, as opposed to a blog, which tends to feel pretty public. People, despite all the technologies for commenting, feel like you’re commenting on their turf. That’s one thing: only you can delete your Twitter. A blog author can delete your comment. As a communications media, it’s great. As a business, it’s lousy, as with all communications media. Like, AIM. How much money does AIM make for AOL?
Dd: I’m not sure. But now there’s also Gchat.
OT: I think there’s something creepy about Gchat, like all Google services. It’s like, in some ways, the way Google goes on and on and on about how they’re not evil; makes you wonder what they’re hiding. Why don’t you just admit that you’re a corporation and you’re out to make a buck for your shareholders; you’re not trying to save the world. Then maybe we’ll trust you more.
Dd: I like Gmail. It’s great, but there are certain things about it that seems too Big Brother-ish.
OT: Definitely. That’s the tradeoff for having perfect memory. And that’s sort of what Google promises us. You don’t have to remember where to look up information. You can just “Google” it. In fact, I remember information often by the Google keywords I use to find it – which is sad. I’ve offloaded huge portions of my brain to Larry and Sergey, God bless ‘em. But, what am I giving up for that?
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Dd: Now that I’m writing for Lalawag, I’m hoping to get more involved with the LA tech scene – it definitely seems more glam than Silicon Valley.
OT: Well, more glam.. but there’s this notion in Silicon Valley that the more parties you go to the less you’re getting done. That was always sort of the point of Valleywag’s party coverage: documenting who’s there so that you know, ‘Oh, I guess they’re not gonna be at their desk at 8 a.m. the next morning.’ Doing a service to bosses everywhere! [chuckles]
Dd: But what do you think are the big differences between the LA tech scene and Silicon Valley?
OT: I have to disagree with the notion that there even is a LA tech scene. There are tech companies down in LA, but they are largely irrelevant; they don’t form a functioning ecosystem of, ‘Here’s this one company that helped another out.’ Do you have that kind of system of big successful companies that are doing deals? Who are the venture capitalists in LA? There’s Clearstone and the Velocity Interactive folks. I guess there’s a tech “scene” as in “see and be seen.” But a tech economy? A tech cluster of innovation? I don’t see it. I could be convinced otherwise, but no one’s really shown me.
Dd: How has the transition been to Gawker? Has it been business as usual or has there been more of a shift?
OT: It’s definitely been a shift, but it’s been exciting. Like the Jett Travolta story? I happened to be on weekend duty when more details were coming out. I was the first one to say, ‘Hey. Who’s this nanny guy? Isn’t he the same guy who was caught kissing Travolta a couple years back? Doesn’t Scientology have weird views on medical conditions like Autism and isn’t Autism often connected with seizures and was what was thought to be what killed Jett?’ It may have been a little too early for a lot of people, but that’s Gawker’s role. Our role is to say what everyone else is thinking but is too timid, for whatever reason, to write.
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Check in tomorrow for part two of Lalawag’s interview with Owen Thomas.
