Steve Jobs's return to Apple and, we hope, health seems to have led to something much more interesting: the return of Fake Steve to his blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. This started to wake up a week ago with a simple headline: "Feeling ... strange. Am I ... in heaven?" It's now fully engaged with Livergate and associated press coverage.
Fake Steve stopped writing his popular blog just under a year ago, telling The New York Times that "he had grown tired of his fictional creation, but mainly he was worried about making fun of a real person whose health has been a recent topic of speculation."
Fake Steve directed readers to his Real Dan blog -- one started under his own name, Dan Lyons. However, this ran into trouble over Yahoo. In November, The Industry Standard's Jordan Golson wrote:
A frustrated Dan Lyons told me this afternoon that he is hanging up his personal blog at RealDanLyons.com after his Newsweek bosses made him yank a blog post where Lyons (rightfully) called Yahoo's PR staff "lying sacks of shit."
It's no surprise that a Newsweek writer blogging under his own name couldn't get away with anything like the same amount of stuff as an anonymous blogger writing as a fake CEO.
If Real Dan is returning to the Fake Steve scene refreshed and ready for action, we could be in for an amusing time. If not, it's not the end of the world. It's only a blog.
