Forbes editor revealed as ‘Fake Steve Jobs’
For the past 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive and one of the world’s most famous businessmen.
Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine, wrote anonymous postings on the blog, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.
The mysterious writer has used the blog to lampoon Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley’s overall aura of excess.
The acerbic postings of “Fake Steve,” as he is known, have attracted a plugged-in readership — both the real Jobs and Bill Gates have acknowledged reading the blog, fakesteve.blogspot.com. At the same time, Fake Steve has evaded the best efforts of Silicon Valley’s gossips to discover his real identity.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Daniel Lyons, a senior Forbes magazine editor who lives near Boston, has been quietly enjoying the attention.
“I’m stunned that it’s taken this long,” said Lyons, 46, when a reporter interrupted his vacation in Maine on Sunday to ask him about Fake Steve. “I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I’ve been sort of waiting for this call for months.”
Lyons writes and edits technology articles for Forbes and is the author of two works of fiction, most recently a 1998 novel, “Dog Days.” In October, Da Capo Press will publish his satirical novel written in the voice of the Fake Steve character, “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.”
The book, in part, led to Lyons’s unmasking. Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine.
The New York Times found Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of “Fake Steve” to a blog Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point (floatingpoint.wordpress.com).
Though many speculators have guessed that Fake Steve was an Apple insider, Lyons says he has never interviewed Jobs nor written a story about the company. “I have zero sources inside Apple,” he said. “I had to go out and get books and biographies to learn about a lot of the back story.”
Lyons receives around 50 e-mail messages a day through the blog, many with ideas for posts, and says the site had 700,000 visitors last month. Someone claiming to be Jobs’ daughter, Lisa, recently wrote to tell him, “You don’t sound at all like my father, but your blog is hilarious.”
The guessing game around his identity was intense, with speculation centering on a variety of plugged-in journalists, former Apple employees and even Jobs himself.
Over the past year, Forbes Publisher Richard Karlgaard even got into the act, speculating several times on Forbes.com about Fake Steve’s identity. At one point he wrote: “The guessing game has begun. Who is writing it? Send me your guesses. I’ll gladly buy the most expensive iPod for the first to identify Fake Steve Jobs.”
Lyons said he felt bad and later revealed himself to his bosses and colleagues.
Karlgaard said he had a good laugh and holds no grudges. “I think it is the most brilliant caricature of an important part of American culture that I’ve seen,” he said. “We’re really proud that he’s one of ours.”
Forbes had planned to move the Secret Diary to Forbes.com in September, although it may now accelerate the move.
WHO’S WHO
Daniel Lyons’ blog “Fake Steve” won many fans in the technology world, serving up hilarious daily satire of what purported to be a “secret diary” of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc. The blog takes potshots at many major figures in the technology world, and sometimes invented nicknames for them. A guide to who’s who on the blog Fake Steve:
Beastmaster: Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates
Uncle Fester: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Lyons says Ballmer looks like he was “separated at birth” from the character on the 1970s-era TV show “The Addams Family.”
Squirrel Boy: Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt. Lyons figures Schmidt doesn’t mind. “I’m sure he’s laughing all the way to the bank.”
My Little Pony: Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems Inc. A dig at Schwartz’s ponytail, and apparently a name that insiders at Sun call him behind his back.
Bike Helmet Girl: Lyons spotted an online picture of a woman doing funky dance moves at a party while wearing a bike helmet, then posted a photo on the blog and invented a story line about Jobs having a crush on her.
Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth: Nick Denton and Owen Thomas, the owner and managing editor, respectively, of Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog that made many fruitless attempts to uncover Lyons’ identity. In a posting on Sunday, Fake Steve wrote of his outing: “My only regret is that we didn’t get a chance to see Bigglesworth take a few more swings and misses.”
The Associated Press