Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple executive famous for popularizing the practice of "evangelism" in tech marketing, loves Twitter, like every good self-promoting hack. But how can you tell when a hack gets hacked?

Click to viewThis is why people love Apple executive turned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, whether or not he knows what he's talking about. At a Commonwealth Club event, Kawasaki was asked about his insanely popular "Ten Ways to use LinkedIn." Watch him squirm for a minute before 'fessing up: LinkedIn flack Kay Luo provided Guy with his talking points for the post. "I really needed a post — it was four days!" Guy, next time feel free to raid our inbox. We get more helpfully-already-written posts than we'd ever imagined possible.

This is no coincidence, folks. Nick Denton soft-shutters our site and boom, we're added to Guy Kawasaki's "online magazine rack" Alltop within 24 hours. Guy's not afraid to play hockey with us anymore. Slapshot to the face! Guy, I'm a French-Canadian goalie. You'll be surprised how many of those I can take.

I haven't had a chance to read Mr. Evangelism's latest book, Reality Check, but there's a tidy profile of Guy Kawasaki, the Apple marketer turned startup cheerleader, in USA Today. His biggest flub: Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz tried to hire him as CEO of Yahoo in the '90s. "I'd say that was a $2 billion or $3 billion mistake," the Hawaiian-born hockey nut admits. "Now Michael doesn't call me. I can't say I blame him." Yeah, and I'll bet Carl Icahn hates you now, too. (Photo by USA Today / Michael Mullady)

Yesterday, as Web 2.0's bubble burst in slow motion at 30,000 feet over downtown San Francisco, I received a preview copy of Reality Check, by Guy Kawasaki. Someone had stuck a Post-it on the cover: "See inside for foreword by The Fake Steve Jobs!" Awesome. I'm never going to read Kawasaki's book, even though he's way more successful than I'll ever be. I skipped to Dan Lyons's foreword, written in his Fake Steve persona. Here's the best parts:

Serial list-maker Guy Kawasaki's latest attempt at a hit startup is Alltop, an "online magazine rack." Kawasaki has promised Popurls creator Thomas Marban a $109,000 Audi R8 if Alltop takes off. Alas, twenty minutes of cruising the site — yet another techie's attempt to aggregate media sites by stripping their headlines into a bland common format, rather than creating a new rollup brand like Drudge or Huffington — makes me think Marban should ask for a new MacBook and call it a day.

Vancouver-based NowPublic is ostensibly all about citizen journalism. But since Guy Kawasaki sold Truemors to it and signed up as an advisor, it's becoming better known for publishing flattering lists of "influencers," supposedly ranking them according to various social media metrics. The first "Most Public" list focused on New York, but a new list for the Valley and San Francisco is "coming soon." And by virtue of being included in the latest edition, we received an early copy as a press release. Who comes out on top? Ubiquitous attention slut Robert Scoble, naturally. Full list after the jump.

I blame Guy Kawasaki. Ten days after the relentless listmaker joined the advisory board of Vancouver-based citizen journalism hub NowPublic, the site published a link-baiting "The 50 most influential people in New York." We've had this piece in our inboxes since Friday morning, but we couldn't figure out how to get anyone in the Valley to care about a list topped by Noah Brier and Jeff Jarvis. More interesting is me-blogger Anil Dash's take on the genre: "First and foremost, organizations create these lists to promote their own authority." Exactly. We've been pitched to do a Valleywag 100 or Valleywag 40 or whatever by consultants who crank out marketing events for a living. But they balk when we ask for a deck of playing cards emblazoned with the faces of 52 People We Want Gone.

Guy Kawasaki's A-list generator Alltop has spawned a new A-list: Frienderati is an aggregated feed of the latest five entries from the 101 most followed users of FriendFeed. My browser can't find an RSS feed for the page yet, but I'm sure there'll be one. Just as I'm sure someone will figure out how to sort this thing by popularity rather than alphabetically. While you're at it, can you strip out the posts and just post the pecking order of names? That seems easier.

Guy Kawasaki's $12,107.09 rumor site has indeed been bought by NowPublic, a citizen journalism enterprise. But NowPublic hasn't, as we incorrectly presumed yesterday, shuttered Truemors. Sorry, Guy, and what a relief: Every time I try to read NowPublic's self-important essays such as "An Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama Concerning Talk of an Asassination," I find myself back-buttoning to Truemors for a chaser like "Public Toilet in India Pays to Pee."

Update: Truemors is back up, though occassionally throwing errors, according our former colleague Jordan Golson over at the Industry Standard.

Alltop is Guy Kawasaki's latest project: a news aggregator which shows the titles of the last few posts from a number of different blogs in various categories including Politics, Sports, Fashion and the very aptly named Egos. The top of the Egos section includes feeds from inflated-head, Internet-famous writers like Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, and, of course, Guy Kawasaki. In other words, it's an overblown blogroll, if a well-designed one. Nice work, Guy! We asked Fake Steve Jobs what he thought about being included in the Egos list: "I'm not sure what this site is all about, but I'm deeply honored to be included. Guy Kawasaki is a personal hero." Guy, be warned: You do not have a lock on the ego-inflation market.

It's not every day that a Silicon Valley titan is cast into 5.375" of plastic. Marketing guru Seth Godin unearthed the real secret to self-evangelist success: Get yourself turned into an action figure. There's no better way to promote your name than to sell yourself for a mere $8.95 to every wannabe entrepreneur looking for a false idol to consult. Oddball toy store Archie McPhee has recreated Godin's baldpated goodness, complete with mismatched socks and a Little Book of Marketing Secrets. If only it carried the full line of self-promotional cultmongers, we'd finally be able to pit Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis, and Robert Scoble against one another in a battle for biggest ego — right before Megatron decapitates them.

PR blogger Vince Bank is peeved that tech evangelist Guy Kawasaki is using Twitter to promote his startup Truemors, instead of giving him "personal insights." And he calls himself a PR guy? Kawasaki's fanboys accept and defend his self-promotion. Bank even misses the valuable lesson Kawasaki taught him when Bank's self-promoting post to Truemors was banned. He asks, "Is this a classic case of 'Do as I say, but not as I do?'" The answer is yes. Unlike Kawasaki, Bank just isn't brassy enough to get away with it.

The Q&A session at the Computer History Museum last night was billed as a talk between former Apple evangelist turned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and former anonymous blogger turned book shill Dan Lyons, better known as Fake Steve Jobs. But it quickly turned into a sordid three-way. Brad Stone, the New York Times scribe who outed Lyons as Fake Steve joined the two on stage, and what was billed as the "Confessions of Fake Steve Jobs" turned into a celebration of Apple, blogging, and Dan Lyons's massive mancrush on the real Steve Jobs.

Guy Kawasaki does an FSJ Q&A in Mountain View, semantic search gets a little sexy in Palo Alto, and you get a chance to control the government, all in today's Valleywag Calendar.

Ever since studly Timesman Brad Stone outed Forbes editor Dan Lyons as Fake Steve Jobs, the author of the faux-Apple CEO Web diary, I've been waiting to see what happens when Lyons meets up with some of the folks he's savaged as the blog's anonymous auteur. I'll get my first chance when Lyons gets interviewed by former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, who's been repeatedly ridiculed by Lyons as Fake Steve. But why would Kawasaki display any hard feelings when he can use the notoriety of a feud to elevate his rapidly sinking profile? Dignity doesn't move units. The interview, sponsored by LinkedIn, takes place November 6 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. (Photos by hyku)

Guy Kawasaki blogs that Twitter has made his rumor site Truemors a better Web site. If only that were so. Kawasaki manages to stretch three well-known aspects of Twitter into nine purported improvements to his own site. (What, the relentless marketer couldn't stretch the list all the way to ten?) The post boils down to these truisms: Twitter is fast, good for networking, and good for promoting yourself. None of which makes Truemors a better site. Why doesn't Kawasaki just admit he wished he'd started Twitter instead of Truemors?

Startup advisor Guy Kawasaki has added a new, useless feature to rumor-submission site Truemors. Exploiting the popularity of microblogging site Twitter, the devilishly unsuccessful angel investor has created a Twitter profile for the site and a tab displaying submissions to that profile, making it easier for text-message users — or the merely lazy — to participate. Clearly, Kawasaki hopes this "Twitter News Network" will metastasize Truemors throughout Silicon Valley's body impolitic. At least Kawasaki practices what he preaches: This is surely one of the stupid things you can do with less money. Unfortunately, the rumors, while perhaps more rapid, remain random and uninteresting, drawn on rereported news, not real gossip. Even Kawasaki may realize this: he doesn't allow users to vote, Digg-style, on Twittered Truemors.

Guy Kawasaki interviews Frank Warren, the guy behind the fantastic PostSecret website and author of four spinoff books. Here's my nasty secret: I own several of Guy's books. [How to Change the World]