Clarification at 7:02 a.m. PST: This article originally noted Silicon Alley Insider's report that Dan Lyons has been banned from CNBC. A CNBC representative disputes that assertion.
Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons, whose anonymous "Fake Steve Jobs" satire blog took the tech world by storm in 2007 went on a blunt rant on cable network CNBC that questioned its journalistic tactics--but contrary to a blog report, CNBC says he has not been banned from appearing on the network.
Lyons was facing off against CNBC's Silicon Valley bureau chief, Jim Goldman, in a segment about the sudden news on Wednesday afternoon that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be taking a medical leave of absence following conflicting rumors and reports about his health.
Here's what happened: Gizmodo, a well-established gadget blog owned by Gawker Media, had reported that Jobs' health was "declining rapidly" and that his medical state was the reason that he would not be giving his traditional keynote address at the Macworld Expo. Goldman quickly shot down the rumor, citing sources; Jobs underwent treatment for pancreatic cancer in the past, but Apple had repeatedly insisted that he was now healthy.
Days later, Jobs said he had been diagnosed with a "hormone imbalance," implying that it was the reason he stepped down from the Macworld appearance. Goldman had been wrong. Then, on Wednesday, Jobs announced that he was taking the aforementioned leave of absence and that Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook would handle management in the interim.
"You can try to backpedal and say that what you reported was true," Lyons said to Goldman on CNBC, adding that the broadcast journalist had been "played" and "punked" by his sources at Apple, "but look, you should apologize to Gizmodo for having criticized them and apologize to your viewers for having gotten it so wrong."
He also took a direct dig at the credibility of CNBC, asking, "Why have a bureau out in Silicon Valley?"
Silicon Alley Insider later reported that Lyons had been banned from the cable network for life. CNBC spokesman Kevin Goldman told CNET News that this is not true and that Lyons has not been banned from the network.
Lyons, while an editor at Forbes, started the anonymous "Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" blog and continued writing it, even after he was outed as the author. He spun the blog off into a book, Options, and later left Forbes for Newsweek. Around the time he made his job switch, he stopped writing as "Fake Steve."
An additional correction was made at 8:40 a.m. PT. Dan Lyons used to be an editor at Forbes, not Fortune.
(Credit:
Topherchris.com)
Some nasty pranksters, likely associated with Web forum 4Chan, have hacked into Apple gossip mainstay MacRumors' live-blog coverage of Tuesday's Macworld keynote. Hosted on a separate domain, MacRumorsLive.com, the site was plagued by offensive messages about Apple CEO Steve Jobs' health and general inanity (i.e. "SEX ME") before finally succumbing to "technical difficulties."
It remains uncertain whether the pranksters actually brought down the site, or whether MacRumors voluntarily took it down to keep things under control.
It's pretty clear, however, that this was the work of 4Chan, which has gained both respect and notoriety (depending on who you ask) over the past year for its persistent protests against the controversial Scientology sect in the form of an offshoot group called "Anonymous."
Over on 4Chan's labyrinthine forums, a couple of threads (warning: contains explicit language) hint at members' collusion to take down MacRumors Live, and the hacked live blog was peppered with declarations of "4CHAN FTW" (that's "for the win," for those who stepped in late).
This year's Macworld Expo has gained particular attention because Apple has announced that it's the last in which it will have a presence. Additionally, iconic CEO Steve Jobs bowed out of the keynote presentation. took his place.
The 4Chan skulduggery appears to have first been noticed by Twitter users and independent blogs like Topherchris.com, which took the screenshot above.
One Twitter user pointed to rumors on social-news site Digg that 4Chan members had been circulating MacRumors passwords on Monday night.
It's a silly prank, yes. But it could have a big impact on MacRumors: this is likely the site's biggest day of the year, and the event could have an impact on both ad revenues and server costs.
UPDATE: It's not totally clear who's actually responsible for this attack. We've been getting a handful of e-mails indicating that it may have been a non-4chan group called Myg0t that was using the 4chan forums to organize, and another e-mail claimed credit on behalf of another forum community, Ebaumsworld. Indeed, screenshots show that one of the hacker messages read, "We are from Ebaumsworld. We are hackers on steroids."
Honestly? The world may never know.
This post was updated at 2:13 p.m. PT.
Looks like the "$240 million poke"--also known as the high-profile stake in Facebook that Microsoft acquired on Wednesday--may not have been the only deal-making. Forbes' Elizabeth Corcoran posted a quick blog entry saying that she'd heard two New York-based hedge funds had each handed over about $250 million to the cash-fueled social network. The Silicon Alley Insider notes that this makes sense, as rumors had pointed to a $750 million goal for the financing round in the first place.
Facebook representatives declined to comment on the matter.
Additionally, Fake Steve Jobs (who is really a Forbes reporter himself) also reported that the "hedgetards" are in on the deal, which would be unremarkable were it not for his coining of the hilarious term "hedgetard" (you know, in the same vein as "frigtard" or "freetard").
The New York Observer reported Monday that Greg Atwan and Evan Lushing, two recent Harvard graduates living in New York, have reportedly earned a five-figure book deal for a satirical take on social-networking phenomenon Facebook. The book pitch, called The Facebook Book, sold to Harry N. Abrams, Inc. for somewhere around $50,000, according to The Observer.
Facebook famously started in a Harvard dorm in 2004, with founder (and eventual dropout) Mark Zuckerberg and several friends creating the social network as an alternative to the school's physical "facebook" with photographs and contact information for the student body.
Thanks to my membership in the sprawling "New York, N.Y." network on Facebook, I did the appropriate Reporting 2.0 thing and promptly did a search for both young satirists; it appears that Lushing, a 2004 graduate of Harvard, also attended Zuckerberg's boarding school alma mater, the elite Phillips Exeter Academy. Atwan, who earned his Crimson cred in 2005, has locked up his profile to non-friends.
The Observer article relates that the Chelsea-based roommates have both quit their jobs in anticipation of the book, which should see print in the spring. Lushing, who had been on staff at the Harvard Lampoon satire magazine while in school, had been working in an online-video comedy troupe in Los Angeles and has relocated to New York; Atwan was an editor at the news aggregation start-up Newser.
Let's hope The Facebook Book is a better read than Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs.
(I, for the record, thought that my colleague Tom Krazit was much too nice to Fake Steve Jobs scribe Daniel Lyons in his review of the book.)
Fake Steve Jobs got outed, but none of these Brooklyn concert-goers really cared. Oh, well.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)"See, Fake Steve Jobs was like the Banksy of blogging."
I was trying to explain to the guy standing next to me why I'd just flipped out. We were at McCarren Park Pool, a massive abandoned-natatorium-turned-concert-venue in the Brooklyn hipster hub of Williamsburg (a neighborhood which any New Yorker either loves or loathes). All summer, McCarren has hosted a series of "Pool Parties" concerts, sponsored by youth-oriented "social tech" brands like Helio and Going.com, and this past Sunday was no exception. Hordes of sunburned music fans in imitation Ray-Bans and shrunken plaid shirts had crowded into the drained swimming pool for performances by I'm From Barcelona and Blonde Redhead, and while they were batting around beach balls in the mosh pit, New York Times writer Brad Stone outed Fake Steve Jobs as Forbes editor Daniel Lyons.
Upon seeing the headline on my mobile Google Reader, I may have overreacted just a bit.
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The photo of the real Steve Jobs preferred by the fake Steve Jobs
(Credit: Fake Steve Jobs)Like many of you, I have my own theory as to Fake Steve Jobs' real-life identity. But I'm not going to discuss it here. At this point, bloggers' rabid attempts to lay bare the face behind the anonymous writer have grown a bit tiresome, and for all we know, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs will turn out to be a corporate travail staffed by a team of six writers nabbed from The Office. But that's not to say that Fake Steve isn't newsworthy. The blog, I'm willing to argue, has more to say about the state of the media today than a thousand "purple cows," noisy disruptors, viral-buzz ecosystems, and whatever other business clichés you'd like me to throw in your face.
More than a few people would agree that the blogger behind Fake Steve, underneath his exaggerated Jobsian obnoxiousness, ranks right up there with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as one of the most spot-on social critics we have. But because nobody knows who he is, he can get away with more: Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman is a " sociopathic nouveau riche lady-killer," Gawker Media founder Nick Denton is almost never mentioned without the epithet "macrocephalic," and his Valleywag successor Owen Thomas is constantly referred to as "Mr. Bigglesworth." Former vice president and current global warming figurehead Al Gore is depicted as emotionally fragile and tormented by marriage problems that lead him to frequently call up the faux Jobs and ask for a couch to crash on (which tends to infuriate Mrs. Jobs). Rockers turned social crusaders Bono and The Edge, according to Fake Steve, are prone to bar fights. ("Bono says it's an Irish thing," the satirist asserts flippantly.)
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