Fake Steve Jobs Busted

The quest to unmask the anonymous author of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a satirical blog purportedly written by Apple's charismatic chief executive, is over.

The snarky, no-holds-barred diary, which lampooned everyone from tech industry figureheads to tech journalists to venture capitalists, has enthralled and amused the blogosphere for the past 14 months.

In Business 2.0 magazine's recent list of "The 50 Who Matter Now", Fake Steve Jobs ranked 37th, ahead of Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, and just a few spots behind Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.

But the mystery surrounding who penned the pseudonymous diary - which has attracted readers from the highest echelons of tech, including Steve Jobs himself and Bill Gates - captivated industry watchers more than the content itself.

Today, the mystery scribe was revealed by The New York Times reporter Brad Stone as Forbes Magazine senior editor Daniel Lyons, bringing to an end a six-month search that in recent months bordered on the illegal.

"Well, tip of the hat to you, Brad Stone ... Now you've ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder," Lyons wrote in his usual acerbic style after he had been outed.

"Hope you feel good about yourself, you mangina."

Previously, Fake Steve lashed out at the "creepy" attempts to unmask him, which reportedly involved shady computer hacking techniques and other privacy invasions.

But today's revelations did little to break Lyons out of his egotistical Fake Steve Jobs character; in fact, the blog will now be rolled into Forbes.com and October will see the publication of Lyons's latest satirical novel, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.

Oroginal and complete story is published at: Sunday Morning Herald