Mousetrap blog: tech's greatest, geekiest mystery is solved

'Fake Steve Jobs', the anonymous blogger who for more than a year has entertained readers with his studied caricature of the Apple chief executive, has finally been outed.

Speculation about the real identity of the blogger, whose writings even the real Steve Jobs – and Bill Gates – have admitted to reading, had been intense, with Apple insiders among those in the frame.

But the blog, whose targets have included venture capitalists, tech journalists as well as fans of open-source software, whom he calls 'freetards', has been revealed to be the work of an editor at Forbes Magazine.

Danial Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes, was unmasked by a reporter at The New York Times, Brad Stone, who compared Fake Steve's writing with that on Mr Lyons' own blog.

Mr Stone said he had narrowed his search when he discovered that a satirical novel to be published in October and written in the voice of the Fake Steve last year was the work of a published novelist and "writer for a major business magazine."

In a post on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Mr Lyons wrote today: "Well it had to happen. Honestly I can't believe it's taken this long. Now (Mr Stone), you've ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder.

'Fake Steve Jobs', whose site had 700,000 visitors last month, had taken to lampooning some of the best known characters in Silicon Valley.

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, was referred to as 'Beastmaster', and Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, as 'Squirrel Boy'.

When a reader asked recently whether 'Fake Steve' had plans to groom a successor, Mr Lyons wrote: "My plan at this time is to live forever and to remain in charge here, though perhaps with fewer restrictions on my power. The truth is, I am not human - I am a man-god, son of Zeus, born to a mortal woman but fathered by the ruler of the gods, lord of thunder."

Over the past year, the guessing game about Fake Steve's identity has intensified, with even Forbes's own publisher, Richard Karlgaard, offering to buy "the most expensive iPod" for whoever outed him.

Today the Silicon Valley gossip site Valley Wag, which had long been on the case, was putting together the evidence that may have alerted a savvy reader of both Mr Lyons's writings in Forbes and 'Fake Steve'.

A real interview with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, last year in which Mr Ballmer claimed to have the threat from open-source software in check was followed four days later by a blog post in which Mr Ballmer sounded off to 'Fake Steve' about Linux, an open-source software provider.

Mr Lyons told The New York Times that he had invented the character after becoming frustrated with real chief executives who became bloggers but were rarely candid. "I thought, wouldn't it be funny if a CEO kept a blog that really told you what he thought," he said.

He added that he had tried out several voices but had settled on the flamboyant Apple chief executive, whose words play out under the blog's header: "Dude, I invented the friggin' iPhone. Have you heard of it?"

Fake Steve will now continue but as part of the Forbes.com site, the blog suggested today. "I'm taking a few days off to sit in a lake and do some yoga and meditation and non-thinking. Then I'm coming back next week, badder than ever," the most recent post reads.

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