No, make that just plain writing for dollars. Fake Steve Jobs has a day job? Why, yes. Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor who pens the faux-Apple CEO blog, has chucked his pajamas, donned a suit and tie, and filed a story for the magazine's website. How does he find the time, with all that blogging? The subject: SCO, the software company which filed for bankruptcy as a series of its anti-Linux lawsuits fell apart. [Forbes]
Readers, you amaze us. And fascinate us. And very occasionally, disappoint us. Our corporate overlords, who are all afroth about search engine optimization these days, sent us a list of the top search terms people use to find posts on Valleywag. Photobucket, whose sale to MySpace we broke exclusively, ranks highly, as does Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Fake Steve Jobs. But "webcam sex"? "Lick it"? "Hot Asians"? Really, people. Behave yourselves. The full list, after the jump.
AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, tired of playing ambush journalist with her handheld videocamera, tries her hand at pretending to be Dan Lyons, the fabulous Forbes fabulist behind "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." Sort of. Except here, she's Fake Jerry Yang, a faux version of Yahoo's CEO, not Fake Steve Jobs The best bit comes when Swisher imagines Yang's reaction to Brad Garlinghouse, the controversial Yahoo executive who called for major changes in what's now called "The Peanut Butter Memo."
Fake Brad Stone is doing a passable job of celebrating the career of the ruggedly handsome New York Times reporter who outed Fake Steve Jobs. Passable. I mean, I like the idea of supplanting the Pulitzer Prize with a new "Stoney" award. But Fake Brad could do so much more. He could, for example, burst into song. With apologies to George Thorogood — and, while I'm at it, to Brad Stone, Fake Brad Stone, and my readers — Valleywag presents a rock-and-roll celebration of our favorite Timesman. Here are the lyrics to "Brad to the Stone":
Earlier this week, we conducted a thoroughly unscientific poll asking Valleywag readers how much Forbes should pay Dan Lyons, the senior editor recently revealed to be Fake Steve Jobs, to bring his faux-Apple-CEO show to the magazine's website. The answer? A solid majority said Forbes should pay Lyons at least $100,000, and the weighted average of the votes came in at $275,495. That's just a bit more than Lyons school chum and Lenovo marketing VP David Churbuck said the blog was worth, shortly before his pal was outed. The people have spoken, and for Lyons's sakes, one hopes his bosses will listen — but I can't help pointing out that that's a lot of cheddar for a blog long on cheese. The final results, after the jump.
Since the two of them got sweaty and wrestled in prep school, Lenovo marketing executive David Churbuck has been a loyal pal to Forbes editor Dan Lyons. For months, Churbuck has been protecting Lyons's secret identity as Fake Steve Jobs. But now we're getting worried. Churbuck, you see, has gone on a fast — just like Fake Steve himself. Now, the public story is that he wants to "lose some weight" and "clear out the plumbing" (ewwww). But we suspect that this is the truth: Churbuck is fasting until the stingy bastards at Forbes give his buddy a big fat raise for selling out his popular blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Now, gentle readers, you have two lives to save, not one. Get Churbuck eating again, and put food on Lyons's table, by voting in our poll: How much should Forbes pay Lyons to be Fake Steve? You decide.
On air yesterday, CNBC anchor Melissa Francis told Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor recently revealed as Fake Steve Jobs, that he deserved a raise. Lyons nervously concurred. Nervously, because he still hasn't concluded fraught negotiations with his employer on how much Forbes will pay to bring his blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, on board when Brad Stone of the New York Times outed him as the author. But no matter. "We've already established what you are, ma'am," I can imagine Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard telling Lyons. "Now we're just haggling over the price."
In an interview with CNBC, Dan Lyons, the Forbes senior editor revealed as Fake Steve Jobs, makes two fascinating admissions: First, that he has, in fact, not concluded negotiations with his employer on bringing the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog to Forbes.com. Second, that he and his employer did have a plan in the works to launch a Forbes-backed version of his site after Labor Day. I'm counting that as two hunches confirmed.
My musing on why it took Forbes so long to reach a deal with its own editor, Dan Lyons, to bring his Secret Diary of Steve Jobs to Forbes.com, raised a question in my mind: How do we know the outing of Fake Steve Jobs wasn't an inside job? There's one very close link: Damon Darlin, the recently appointed technology editor at the Times who edited the story, used to work at Forbes. I have the utmost respect for the reporting skills of Brad Stone, the Times reporter who broke the story, and believe he discovered Lyons on his own, the old-fashioned way, through hard work and shoe-leather reporting. But is it possible Forbes insiders, to create buzz for both Lyons's forthcoming Fake Steve book, Options, and the arrival of his blog on Forbes.com, fed the Times just enough tidbits to help Stone land the scoop — or, at the very least, decided to play along once they learned he was on the hunt?
What took Forbes so long to strike a deal to sponsor The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, now that Forbes editor Dan Lyons has been revealed as the faux Apple CEO? Fake Steve has been complaining about money woes for most of the year. It turns out that he asked close chum David Churbuck for help securing a sponsorship back in February, and lo and behold, Wired signed up as a sponsor that same month. And a couple of months later, without much ado, Fake Steve dropped Wired. At the time, Lyons, as Fake Steve, told me this:
It was just a matter of time. Brad Stone, the ruggedly handsome New York Times reporter who outed Forbes editor Dan "She-Lion" Lyons as Fake Steve Jobs, now has his own fake blog. "I am the best journalist ever," the Stone impersonator writes. Funny because it's true. Brad, I hope you're honored. At the very least, this should remove any lingering questions you had on whether you deserve A-list blogger status. And the "childish sense of wonderment"? None of that for the She-Lion. It's all for you, baby, all for you.
Lenovo marketing executive David Churbuck is really, really close to Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor recently outed as Fake Steve Jobs. They went to prep school together. They, um, wrestled together. And then they followed each other from job to job. Can anyone say "stalker"? But here's the really scary part. In a post from February, Churbuck describes, at length, a friend with a popular blog who's trying to find advertisers. A friend who, like Dan Lyons as Fake Steve Jobs, experimented with Google's AdSense program and a CafePress store. Except Churbuck persistently refers to the blogger as "her" and "she." Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider thinks Churbuck was "shielding" Lyons's identity. I don't know, Peter. I think there are some deeper identity issues going on here. Let me say it again, folks: prep school wrestling team. You know what that means.
Alas, poor Blogger. Fake Steve Jobs, one of the highest-profile users of the Google-owned blog service is departing for ... Forbes.com? Yes. The online arm of the stuffy business magazine isn't known for hosting blogs, but it's making room for Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor recently outed as Fake Steve jobs, the faux Apple CEO. The only question: Will Lyons get a raise for his troubles? I sure hope so. When last Fake Steve and I made plans to dine out, he proposed a burrito at Pancho Villa, the beloved and cheap taqueria in San Francisco's Mission District.
The most fascinating bit in Brad Stone's exposé of Fake Steve Jobs? For commenter davidu, it was the revelation that real Apple CEO Steve Jobs was interviewed by instant messenger. Impressive: Someone at the Times — most likely John Markoff — has Jobs's iChat screenname. And editors at Gray Lady consented to the inclusion of notes from an IMterview. We sent our crack reporters on a digging mission and they discovered this exclusive transcript. Must credit Valleywag!
A year ago, Rich Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes, promised "the most expensive iPod" to the first person to identify Fake Steve Jobs. It took Brad Stone of the New York Times a year — or an afternoon, depending on how you look at it — but he's now in a position to collect. (We're deeming Karlgaard's prize to be a $599, 8GB iPhone, since the real Steve Jobs likes to tout it as "the best iPod ever.") Stone, of course, unmasked Karlgaard's own employee, Dan Lyons, as the writer of the faux Apple CEO blog. One small hitch in calling Karlgaard to account, however: I doubt Times ethics policies would allow Stone to accept the reward. Update: Karlgaard apparently reads Valleywag. He now proposes that he auction off a $599 iPhone in Stone's honor instead.
New York Times writer Brad Stone was all set to accuse Forbes editor Dan Lyons of being Fake Steve Jobs. The carefully assembled evidence: Phrases like "mwah," "fair enough," and "peace and love" that popped up in both Lyons' blog and Fake Steve's, as well as Lyons' geographical location in Boston, where email headers had long indicated Fake Steve's presence. And Lyons is a published novelist. Faced with this evidence, Lyons didn't even put up a fight.
