The jig is up, the secret is out, the game is over: Forbes editor Dan Lyons is Fake Steve Jobs, the now-unmasked author of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Brad Stone of the New York Times, to my dismay, was the one to out Lyons as the faux Apple CEO. It was crushing. I've known for some time now that several Forbes employees were in on the secret. Lyons, as Fake Steve, even hinted at the outing in a post today: "My world, anyway, is about to change." My apologies to readers. But it makes perfect sense. Here are the not-so-coincidental similarities between Lyons's chosen enemies and Fake Steve's.

Call off the virtual dogs: Andy Ihnatko has gracefully taken himself out of the running for secret writer of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. I'd like to say it was the cunning interview I conducted with Ihnatko, but Ihnatko proved more cunning than me, throwing me off the scent by hiding a piece of Fake Steve trivia he actually knew. In the pages of Macworld, however, Ihnatko is unequivocal in his denials, and I believe him. So with Ihnatko revealed as a fake Fake Steve, it's back to hunting for the real Fake Steve. I have one hot but hard-to-believe tip that I'm pursuing, but I always welcome more.

The fanboys at The Unofficial Apple Weblog wimp out, declaring their search for Fake Steve Jobs over before they even began. [TUAW]

When Fake Steve Jobs does a pretend Apple earnings call, who's going to be on the line? Why, Fake Gene Munster, of course. (CNBC tech correspondent Jim Goldman tipped me off to this anonymous Apple blogger.) It's a sign of the insanity that's grown up around the faux Apple CEO that someone is now impersonating a stock analyst at Piper Jaffray, a second-tier investment bank known for its tech research. Personally, I'm betting it's actually Munster himself. SEC restrictions on what analysts can say and do have gotten so absurd that an anonymous — and plausibly deniable — blog makes for the perfect outlet. Come on, Gene, fake or otherwise — tell us what you really think.

Someone has spooked Fake Steve Jobs. Drifting in and out of character as Apple's CEO, Fake Steve has posted some rambling accusations on his blog about Valleywag publisher Nick Denton. I'm pretty sure FSJ is pulling another one of his over-the-top jokes, but for the record, Denton is far too cheap to shell out money to pay a private investigator to tail Fake Steve.

Months after Valleywag named Mac columnist and book author Andy Ihnatko as a possible writer of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, people have started fingering him as Fake Steve Jobs, the pretend Apple CEO, again, based on nothing more than some skimpy IP-address data. My pesky journalist instincts kicked in: Why not actually ask him? My lazy blogger instincts kicked in: Why not just do an IMterview? So I did. He warned me that he wouldn't give me any real answers about Fake Steve. And he delivered on that promise. But even so, I came away doubting that he's FSJ. A transcript of our AIM conversation follows.

Witness the dueling goatees! The raised eyebrows! The utter failure to reveal any new facts about the man behind The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs! News.com's Tom Krazit and I duke it out in trying to explain the Fake Steve Jobs phenomenon for CNBC's Melissa Francis. (Video by CNBC)

Is Andy Ihnatko Fake Steve Jobs? Valleywag was the first to name him publicly as a candidate for writing the faux diary of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, but now Ihnatko is being fingered again, thanks to a needlessly elaborate Internet sting. Could the longtime Mac columnist be the man behind the curtain?

CNET lands an actual interview with Fake Steve Jobs, but questions about his identity are off-limits. "No me gusta, as they say in French." [CNET]

Owen Thomas at Business 2.0 reveals the first known picture of the elusive Fake Steve Jobs. Do you recognize that hand? [Owen Thomas]

Well, "goes to" might be too strong a word, but Wired will henceforth be sponsoring the Fake Steve Jobs blog. One presumes he'll be turning in some Wired material as well. And just for the record, we only pursued Fake Steve in the sexual sense.