The Silicon Valley blogger Fake Steve Jobs, who has posed online as the Apple chief executive for a year, has been revealed as an editor at Forbes magazine.

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, which has become a must-read in the industry, satirised the cult of Apple, the excess of the tech industry and the so-called "lack of candidness" in corporate blogs.

After several attempts by Silicon Valley gossip sites to identify the author, The New York Times named Daniel Lyons, Forbes technology editor, as Fake Steve Jobs.

Lyon praised NYT reporter Brad Stone's sleuthing skills and said he expected to be outed earlier.

"You've ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder. Hope you feel good about yourself, you mangina. One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag," Lyon posted on the blog yesterday, “I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong."

Both Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and Microsoft boss Bill Gates have admitted to reading the blog, which will be turned into a book and released this autumn. The Fake Steve Jobs blog has moved to the Forbes site beginning Tuesday.

Richard Karlgaard, a Forbes editor who also tried to work out the identity of Fake Steve Jobs, said the blog was a brilliant caricature and that he does not hold a grudge against Lyons - despite once offering an iPod to anyone who could identify the author, according to a Media Guardian article.