Dan Lyons, the author behind Fake Steve Jobs.
(Credit: Forbes)Fake Steve Jobs is no more.
Dan Lyons, the former Forbes writer and soon-to-be Newsweek writer, announced Wednesday in a rambling post that he's shutting down the tech industry phenomenon known as The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. After it launched in 2006, the blog quickly became a must-read for anyone intrigued by Apple, its mercurial founder, and Silicon Valley in general.
Lyons played up some of the well-known traits of Jobs and Apple, such as the CEO's preference for mind-altering substances earlier in his life and the company's obsession with secrecy, to great comic effect. But he also wrote withering posts about other tech companies and executives from Jobs' point of view. The anonymous nature of the blog sparked a frantic guessing game as to the author's identity, which was won by The New York Times in August 2007.
Fake Steve became the main character in a humorous book called Options, but after Lyons was outed the blog seemed to lose some of its immediacy within the tech zeitgeist. Recent guest posts from the likes of Fake Jerry Yang never really generated any buzz, and Lyons' decision to leave Forbes for Newsweek had already put the future of the blog in question.
Lyons intends to start a new site under his own name in the coming weeks.
Daniel Lyons, creator of the Fake Steve Jobs blog.
(Credit: Forbes)Daniel Lyons, the creator of Fake Steve Jobs, is taking his show on the road.
Lyons is leaving Forbes, which has hosted FSJ since Lyons was outed as the creative force behind the blog last year, for Newsweek, according to Silicon Alley Insider.
Fake Steve himself confirms that some sort of hiatus is planned for the next several months, alluding to the recent "concern" over his health in unfurling a plan to spend several months recharging his irreplaceable internal battery on an island in the South Pacific.
Fake Steve was quite the sensation last year, but Internet memes come and go faster than 24-point leads, despite the fact that FSJ remains an amusing source of tech industry satire. Lyons will be taking the place of Steve Levy at Newsweek, who departed for Wired earlier this year.
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