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Fake Steve Jobs Ferreted Out

by , 8:20 AM EDT, August 6th, 2007

Readers have been following the writings of Fake Steve Jobs, an anonymous blogger posing as Apple's CEO, for over a year. Now the jig is up, thanks to some sleuthing on the part of New York Times reporter Brad Stone.

The satyrical voice behind Fake Steve Jobs turned out to be Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes. His blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, has drawn speculation for months about who was behind the writings.

"I'm stunned that it's taken this long" to be uncovered, he said. "I have not been that good at keeping it a secret."

Mr. Lyons has used his blog to rake tech industry personalities and journalists, companies, and the open source software community over the coals. He also made the term "frigtard" popular, and regularly used it to describe tech pundits or anyone else that annoyed him including John Dvorak.

Even though he's been outed, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs will carry on. As of Monday, the blog will be directly associated with Forbes, and a Fake Steve Jobs book titled Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody is due out in October.

While Mr. Lyons took his unmasking in stride, Fake Steve Jobs had his own opinions on the incident and Mr. Stone. "Now you've ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder. Hope you feel good about yourself, you mangina," he said. "One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong."

  

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:Biff Posts: 1479 Joined: 08 Apr 2004
Subject:

I saw some posts on a popular rumor site alleging that Mr. Lyons is also Bosco! Supposedly there is a Bosco book deal in final negoiations with a noted Manhattan-based publisher.

Close Name:Bosco Posts: 1002 Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Subject: Crap

What do you people want? A camera under my toilet seat? My blood pressure streamed live to the Internet? My toenail clippings? Can't a guy just have fun on a few blogs without distracting people from finding Jimmy Hoffa, the WMDs, or Harry Reid's balls?

I'm moving all of my TMO and iPO comments to Forbes. Your loss.

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

I liked "frigtard," that was funny. But the sexism involved in insulting Brad Stone by calling him a girl... that's just uncool, not so funny, pretty offensive really... if you wanna' insult brad stone, insult brad stone... don't use yet another insult to men that's really an insult to women... that's just boring.

so, you just scoot along... over to forbes... here, take a lunch for your trip.
be safe now, hon... bye now.

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