Nicholas Ciarelli

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Nicholas M. Ciarelli (born September 5, 1986) is an American journalist who started Think Secret in 1999 when he was 13 and served as its Editor-In-Chief. The site stopped publishing on December 20, 2007 after a settlement with Apple.

For years his identity was hidden; he wrote under the pen name Nick dePlume, a playful take on “nom de plume.” On January 10, 2005, a blogger revealed that dePlume was a Harvard undergraduate and a reporter for The Harvard Crimson. Two days later, The Harvard Crimson confirmed the connection to Ciarelli. Think Secret was seen as one of the most influential Apple-news sites, and his legal battle with Apple drew coverage from major outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Associated Press.

Ciarelli grew up in Cazenovia, New York, where he was salutatorian and active in the high school stage crew and the closed-circuit TV network. A former math teacher called him an extraordinary kid with a good sense of humor, who loved reading, was a skilled pianist, and a devoted Mac fan. He later contributed to The Daily Beast, and in 2012 co-founded BookBub, an ebook-discovery service based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Josh Schanker.