SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Expo -- The speakers at the keynote sessions this week at the Web 2.0 Expo, while interesting, were unable to do much in the way of stirring the audience -- until today. Taking the stage as himself to tell his story of "Fake Steve Jobs," Dan Lyon, reporter for Forbes magazine, got the crowd rolling (ROTFL, if you will) with both his tale of how he assumed his role as Fake Steve, and a few hilarious cracks at Facebook, Google, social media, and of course, Steve Jobs.

I'm excited to be here at the Expo, he said casually, because "we're sort of at the peak of the second dotcom bubble." He then asked that the audience not "twitter-attack" him during his talk.

Lyon started his blog as Fake Steve Jobs after realizing he needed to create a place for himself on the Internet(s). He first requested a transfer to Forbes.com and asked for a blog, he said, but both requests were turned down (access denied!). So, on his own, he secretly started "a blog written by Steve Jobs as if he were out of control and saying what he really thinks." What began as a prank drew in 90,000 monthly readers within six months and an active message board.

"The other joke of the thing is Steve is really wasted when he writes," he said, explaining why his mascot is a cartoon image of Steve Jobs with a laptop and a bong.

The publisher of Forbes, Rich Karlgaard, ironically enough, ended up writing an article offering a reward for anyone who could figure out who Fake Steve Jobs really was. Lyon, who had just been turned down for a raise at Forbes, emailed the exec as Fake Steve asking for a job and was told, "Oh Steve, you’re a genius, we'd love to hire you!" But it was around that time The New York Times outed Lyon as The Real Fake Steve.

Lyon said he chose Jobs as his blogger alias because he thinks of Jobs as a narcissist who takes himself much too seriously. "I love Macs, but I think the Mac culture really freaks me out. Jobs takes himself very seriously and doesn't have a lot of a sense of humor."

Lyon then assailed Apple and other Web 2.0 companies for acting as if they're consistently changing the world with their products.

"Ladies and gentlemen… the iPhone," he said, mocking Jobs. "Dude. It's a f***ing cellphone."

Lyon also took a few shots at Mark Zuckerberg for a comment he made that media changes every 100 years and Facebook's social ads were that change. "Really, Mark, it's like you're doing Webkinz for adults," he said, likening Facebook to a virtual site where children raise pets. "But it's not a bubble! This Facebook thing is gonna really work out! We’re changing the world!

"Then there's Google with 'don't be evil' -- except," he snickered, "just a little bit."

Aside from the pure hilarity of his talk -- intermingled with photos of Steve Jobs as Jesus Christ; Steve Ballmer as Uncle Fester; and Jonathan Schwartz as My Little Pony -- Lyon said his experience as Fake Steve, and the reaction to his blog, has opened his eyes to how the Internet is changing the future of media. (Pssst. Here's where we tie this into our site.)

"I realized what I've really created is a platform where other people can go to perform. That's kind of what Twitter and Facebook are. What I've got going now is almost this open-source model. People consume content but they also create it." Likening his blog to an accidental social media startup, Lyon said he has regular message board contributors, such as Fake Vladimir Putin, who come to his site to perform and interact socially.

"What's going to happen in the next 10 years is big media companies are going to move into the space... All these blogs are going to roll up into big media companies or become big media companies. In the next 10 years we're going to have something so much bigger and better and wider than what media’s had in the past."

— Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution