If you're not big into tech media, chances are you have never heard of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a satirical blog by an anonymous writer that pokes fun in a semi-serious way at Apple, Steve Jobs himself, and the tech industry as a whole.  The writer, only known as Fake Steve Jobs, does an excellent job of staying in-character as he writes his witty and often scathing articles about what's going on in the tech world.

However, the fact that Fake Steve is anonymous appears to have ruffled some feathers and some people are going to seemingly great lengths to uncover his (or her) identity.  There was even an angry (and surprisingly out-of-character) post on the blog the other day going off on the less than polite efforts made to uncover his identity.  I say seemingly because there's a lot of speculation that in fact FSJ is a publicity stunt by rumor blog Valleywag.

If it is a publicity stunt, it's a wonderful lesson in how easily one can manipulate the masses online and to drive traffic to seemingly unconnected sites.  If it's not, it may be a bigger story on how online journalism may need to start conforming to some basic standards in ethics.

There's an excellent write-up on the situation at CNet.  Check it out at the link below.