You’ve all heard about interweb phenom “Fake Steve Jobs,” right? The blog by that name was a sensation, attracting so much attention that even interweb-shy TV execs noticed. Which brings us to this tale of how the site’s creator, Dan Lyons, has made a new life for himself – under his own name, this time:
Interview by Kwame Opam
Dan Lyons’ career has taken him strange places, from covering IBM to working with Mike Judge on HBO. Remember Fake Steve Jobs? During his time as Forbes tech editor, Lyons created The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs in 2006, pretty much just as a way of understanding how to blog. It was funny and insightful, and it got people to pay attention. Pretty soon the site was earning 1.5 million visitors a month.
To this day, the site remains one of Lyons’ best-known achievements. He’s since written for places like Valleywag and ReadWrite, and is a minor celebrity in the bubble that is tech media. It even landed him a writing gig on Silicon Valley, whose second season finale airs on Sunday. Lyons insists the whole thing was just a crazy accident, though — yet another happy circumstance in a life spent just trying things out.