By EncinoMan
The hit of the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco was a keynote address by Dan Lyons of Forbes Magazine, aka Fake Steve Jobs. If that last sentence sounds a bit surreal, let’s set the Wayback Machine to August 8, 2006, when The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs made its debut in the blogosphere, written by a mysterious blogger known only as “Steve“. Here is a sample of one of his earliest posts:
My life is awesome. Let’s face it. It’s not like I’m bragging. I’m just true. I have the coolest computer company in the world, which I totally started in my garage, all by myself. I invented the friggin iPod, OK?
For the next year, Fake Steve Jobs (or “FSJ” to the cognoscenti) posted with a vengeance on buzzworthy topics ranging from tech industry deals to pop culture to politics, building a following of more than 90,000 readers. His acerbic, over-the-top, and frequently off-color rants mocked such favorite targets as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Hillary Clinton (Fake Steve is stumping for Obama).
FSJ’s true identity remained a mystery until he was outed in August 2007 by reporter Brad Stone of the New York Times. He turned out to be not a disgruntled Apple employee or some plugged-in Silicon Valley insider, but Dan Lyons, a Senior Editor at Forbes, who claims he started blogging as a funhouse mirror version of Apple’s founder initially as a lark:
Mr. Lyons said he invented the Fake Steve character last year, when a small group of chief executives turned bloggers attracted some media attention. He noticed that they rarely spoke candidly. “I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it.”
Mr. Lyons says he recalled trying out the voices of several chief executives before settling on the colorful Apple co-founder. He twice tried to relinquish the blog, but started again after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had disappeared.
Though many speculators have guessed Fake Steve was an Apple insider, Mr. Lyons says he has never interviewed Mr. 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.”
An amusing and ironic side note: Lyons tells the story that shortly before the New York Times article came out, an editor from Forbes, who happened to be Lyons own boss, became intrigued with Fake Steve Jobs and began exchanging emails with him, not realizing he was corresponding with one of his own writers. He even offered FSJ a gig blogging for Forbes, though he had previously turned down a proposal from Lyons to start his own blog for the magazine. Lyons, realizing his precarious position, soon came clean to his boss and shortly afterwards, Forbes began advertising on Fake Steve’s blog.
Even after his secret identity was divulged, Fake Steve continued with his blog, which officially became part of Forbes.com. Last December, Lyons drew concerned comments from his readers by claiming Apple was slapping him with a lawsuit, trying to muzzle him or buy him off, though that, too, turned out to be entirely fictional.
Now at last, the whole story can be told, and who better to tell it but Dan Lyons himself, in his plenary address at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo, on April 25 in San Francisco:
As the old saying goes, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” – and until he was unmasked, few would have suspected that one of the Web’s most off-the-wall, take-no-prisoners satirists would be an otherwise respectable editor at Forbes. As Fast Company’s blog lamented: “Part of the problem with blowing Lyons’ cover is that one now pictures the FSJ’s posts as coming from a middle aged Forbes tech writer.”
The saga of Fake Steve is an example of how creative talent can find an outlet in new media and basically create a widely-followed brand based on an amusing notion, a generous helping of chutzpah, and a maniacal talent for self-promotion. And just to cover his traditional media bases, yes of course he has a book out.