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."