Fake Steve Jobs: Hypocrite or New Believer?

Anil Dash: Fake Steve Jobs and the Triumph of Blogs. Daniel Lyons, author of the heretofore-anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog, which comments extensively on companies in the technology industry, was also the author of Forbes’ November 2005 cover story “Attack of the Blogs”, a 3000-word screed vilifying anonymous bloggers who comment on companies in the technology industry. In 2005, I spoke to Lyons for the article, though the comments I made about both the efforts that have been made to encourage accountability in the blogopshere, as well as the many positive benefits that businesses have accrued from blogging, were omitted from the story. My initial temptation was to mark Lyons as a hypocrite. Upon reflection, it seems there’s a more profound lesson: The benefits of blogging for one’s career or business are so profound that they were even able to persuade a dedicated detractor.

The Forbes article in which Lyons trashed the blog world was such a bad piece of journalism that it was easy to discount. But let’s be generous and give Lyons credit for understanding that the new medium is worth trying after all.

Of course, the Fake Steve Jobs blog does a lot of what Lyons complained about in his original Forbes tirade: It’s deliberately unfair, and it is (or was) published anonymously without any serious accountability.

Of course, maybe Lyons just decided to have some fun…