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Fake Steve Jobs on how to blog

• Maggie Shiels
• 28 Apr 08, 09:35 GMT

If you are going to make your debut on the blogosphere who better to give guidance than the fake Steve Jobs?

He came to San Francisco to do a presentation and add some light relief on the final day of , a gathering of something like 8,000 people who are involved in shaping the future web. He was sans black turtle neck in case you were wondering. And that bong thing in the cartoon is a piece of pure imagination according to the creator.

So for those of you who don't know who is, let me give you some of the back story.

Fake Steve Jobs is a really cool guy named who actually has a grown up job as an editor at Forbes Magazine. He got the idea for the blog after being totally lambasted for writing a piece in the mag about bloggers and how awful they were.

Too young to retire and too old to start all over again. He is only fortysomething by the way. But he says he could sniff a seismic shift in the media world and he knew it was time to change or die. He saw that blogging was growing in popularity and he thought he would give it a whirl and at least learn a new trick in the process.

That's when Dan hit a wall. He might have believed it was a really, really great idea but his bosses at Forbes didn't. So Dan thought, what the heck, I'll do one on my own and have fun with it at the same time. In the green room he told me that the inspiration for the 'fake' blog came from the diary that writes for .

The reason for anonymity was also driven by fear. Fear that he would be kicked into touch by his bosses if they found out he was blogging. Dan says he never expected it to be so huge.

He told the Web 2.0 faithful that in no time he was getting 90,000 hits a week and then all of a sudden it just went on fire and a manhunt was started to unmask the fake Steve Jobs.

Some people even opined that the fake Steve was the real Steve taking the mickey out of the rest of the wired world. Suffice it to say, Dan says the Apple guru doesn't read the blog and he has never met the guy. He's also not so sure he wants to, given his reputation for ruthlessness.

But you know what they say about satire? The reason it works is because it cuts close to the bone and usually has a grain or two of truth in it.

To get where is today, you need focus and a thick skin because the fake Steve isn't the kind of guy you want to take home to mama.

This 'benevolent dictator', as he styles himself in his profile, is arrogant, swears like a trooper, is mean, ruthless, bad-tempered, big headed, and full of it.

Dan on the other hand is this approachable, affable, funny guy who wants to be liked and is frankly likeable. He is social and mixes easily with people and waxes lyrical about his wife and twins back at home in Boston. Can you imagine the real Steve kicking back like that with mere mortals?

The truth is that not many people really know what the real Steve is like. His persona is so tightly controlled. He doesn't do interviews and you don't see him lapping up the celeb circuit. That's a good thing, by the way.

In fact this is indicative of the way Apple works.

Anyone in the media who has had to deal with Apple knows that it is easier to get the code for launching a nuclear warhead than find out ahead of time about new Apple products. And the fact that Dan portrayed the PR machine in his slideshow as a woman atop a tower armed with a gun overlooking Apple really chimed with the audience.

So did other illustrations such as Oracle CEO as a pimp, Microsoft CEO as Uncle Fester and the company's shifting of Vista as an elephant who has just pooped with the headline "Vista drops tomorrow".

Slagging off Microsoft always works at these conferences and had the crowd roaring with laughter.

While there is little doubt that Dan has had fun with his fake Steve Jobs life, he admits the blog 'is like a monkey' on his back. He also says that unlike British people who get satire and irony, a lot of Americans don't and are sometimes horrified by his blog.

Mind you he did reveal that who co-founded Apple with Jobs totally gets what the blog is about. Which must be something of a relief given his portrayal in it as a baboon - and the fact the two recently met. Dan says Woz introduced him on stage and they later exchanged T shirts. "He's just a cool guy. A regular bloke," says Dan.

But back to the advice part of our conversation. Blogging is a daunting task to take on and Dan told me I should take a leaf out of his book and adopt the persona of someone I really admire. I said Audrey Hepburn, who I once interviewed, but I pointed out that she was dead. Dan said that was a plus because the dead can't sue. He also revealed that he is thinking about doing another blog in the guise of a dead person, though he wouldn't reveal who.

If you have any suggestions for fake personas let me know. I won't be allowed to do it, but it might be fun imagining what I would say in that person's voice.

And as to criticisms, Dan said I shouldn't do what he did initially which was to neuter them. He said all comment was good. Well all except the one he got from some guy who posted a fake ad about him trawling for kinky sex.

Fame does indeed have its ups and downs.

Oh just in case you were wondering the fake Steve uses a Mac Air Book. Namaste!

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