So, ValleyWag has gone into release candidate 2, since Nick Douglas was fired? has left for greener pastures. Nick did a great job covering the seedier rumor filled side of things than anyone else, and it sounds like made his fair share of enemies — which is really only a great sign that he was doing his job well.

How has VallegWag done since then (which has really been a whole day and a half)?

Looks like Nick Denton (head honcho of Gawker, the alpha blog ring) is taking over with some help.

I was ready to get my own hate on for the site, but I have to admit that the content is fresh and interesting, if a little zingy and salacious. Not content to merely talk about Barry Diller giving Zuckerberg’s Facebook a look over, but Mr. Denton also has to mention his in-the-closet homosexuality as a prelude to that interest — and the innuendo of college age school boys as a potential part of that interest. Not that earning almost $300 million dollars last year can’t buy Mr. Diller anything he wants — but its a ludicrous proposition to say the least.

At any rate — its quite interesting.

There’s a fun little ValleyWag index — how likely the Bubble is to burst given some comical variables (”Women at conferences not any hotter -10″ — maybe they should be using Confabb more)

Another little blurb on tracking how likely web2.0 companies will be sold off, from the old standby’s, to the absurdedly unknowns — including Digg (weren’t they already sold off to Fox?), GigaOM, and BubbleShare (what’s that?)

Yet another thing worth commenting on is its frequency; favouring a short, punctuated tabloid style, Mr. Denton and whatever merry band of gnomes is helping him, must be working like a banshees to push out posts. Today alone there are (counts on fingers and toes) seven posts! Well done — that’s a lot of dirt to shovel around.

On the other hand, the Design is simply nauseating. The colors, the new confusing logo, the lack of a coherent use of whitespace — I could go on, but as I said — I’m nauseated.

The solution? I suggest using your RSS feeder to read it by the feed — that way you can get at the content which is new and fresh, but avoid the design which is nauseating and stomach churning.