Nah. I don't know Jonathan, but I've followed him on Twitter for quite a while after reading his O'Reilly published book on iPhone web app dev. (I think he's also the guy who took over maintenance of jQTouch.) Anyway, watching the whole thing evolve on his Twitter stream, it sure seems sincere. "Suspected to be a viral marketing campaign" might be a more appropriate headline here.

Conspiracy theories are fun to think about, but too many things don't add up for this one. Thin evidence of it, a potentially anti-Starbucks agenda by coffeestrategies, the fact that Jonathan is a real live person with tons of professional credibility, and the fact that in order for it to be true, Jonathan would have had to pro-actively lie to all those of us who follow and trust him.

That's strikes me as exceedingly unlikely.