On Sunday, July 29, 2007, I asked the Midas Oracle readers to send me the URL of Tyler Cowen’s secret blog (which he gives out only to the readers of his new book). When Tyler Cowen got to know about my blog post, he found the experiment interesting and re-published my request on Marginal Revolution (which is in the top three of all business and economics sites). By now, the whole world-wide world ( ) knows that a little rascal named Chris Masse has called on people to rat on Tyler Cowen. One week later, what are the results?

#1. I am in possession of the URL of Tyler Cowen’s secret blog.

#2. However, nobody did rat on Tyler Cowen. And nobody did send me the URL, as such. A somebody sent me an e-mail, using a pseudonym and a forged e-mail account, hinting me about specific Google queries I should perform to land directly on Tyler Cowen’s secret blog. (Bingo!) My anonymous correspondent said that he/she weighted the moral problematic of selling Tyler Cowen down the river, but concluded that:

[...] I didn’t violate an agreement with Prof. Cowen in revealing this site, because I have not bought his book or emailed to him seeking the address.

RELATED NOTE: Today, via Tech Crunch, we are informed that The New York Times has discovered and unveiled the name of the anonymous writer who blogs at The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a very popular and hilarious tech business blog. It turns out the fake Steve Jobs blog is written by a Forbes editor, Daniel Lyons. How did the New York Times journalist uncover the truth?

[...] The book, in part, led to Mr. Lyons’s unmasking. Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine. The New York Times found Mr. Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of “Fake Steve” to a blog Mr. Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point (floatingpoint.wordpress.com). [...]

My advice to anybody with a secret blog:

• Do forbid the search engines to index your secret blog.
• Beware your writing patterns.
• Don’t drop any clues.

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Pssttt… Does somebody know who the hell hides behind the Hopefully Anonymous blog??

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TYLER COWEN – Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.

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Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution

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Photo: Chris Buck

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External Link: CFM, the vertical portal to prediction markets