#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