Gawker, R.I.P.

I enjoyed Gawker and still enjoy the various sub-sites surrounding it.

The site was alternately irrelevant, hilarious, and informative, often providing news you simply wouldn’t find elsewhere.

And that last item is what ultimately did the website in.

I’m certain many of you are aware of Gawker’s tribulations.  In a nutshell, one day they presented a snippet of a sex tape of Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, and a woman surreptitiously recorded by the man’s wife (!).

Mr. Bollea sued and, unknown to many at the time, he was underwritten by Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech entrepreneur who spent years figuring out a way to get revenge on the site for “outing” him.

The lawsuit went very badly for Gawker and Mr. Bollea not only won but Gawker was ordered to fork over an extraordinary amount of money for presenting that sex tape.  This led to the auctioning of the company and, after it and the other websites around Gawker were purchased by Univision, it was announced Gawker would be gone.

There are plenty of more details regarding this matter and, in the site’s final posting, Nick Denton offers his take of the situation:

How Things Work

Having read about the trail and the history of Gawker, its clear there are many who admire/enjoyed the site as well as plenty of others who look upon its official closing yesterday and say “good riddance”.

For myself, I’ll miss the site though, given some of the details of that trail, I can sorta/kinda understand why the ruling went against them.

When engaged in a lawsuit, don’t be glib and/or a smart-ass.

Anyway, Gawker, I’ll miss you.