Our 12 most-read articles since switching to English in May

In late May of 2016, Silicon Canals switched from Dutch to English for multiple reasons. The change paid off as readership increased steadily throughout the year. We digged deep into our Google Analytics to present you a selection of our most read, posted, shared, liked, tweeted, and retweeted articles of the year.

Why English? Waarom niet gewoon Nederlands?

So why did we make the switch from Good old Dutch to fashionable English? Obviously, as expats are making up a bigger and bigger share of the startup community it just makes sense to report news in English. We have now gotten to the level where companies with predominantly Dutch employees have a strict company policy to send emails in English only, so why should the news stay behind? Also, with Amsterdam more and more becoming one of the main startup cities in Europe, people from outside of the lowlands also want to find out what’s going on here.

May & June:

We barely started reporting in English or the news broke that Apple CEO Tim Cook said yes to the request to send some of Apple’s most talented developers to the Netherlands to teach children how to write code. Sadly no news has popped up around this promise since then, but as the question was posed by – at the time Special Envoy of Startupdelta –  Neelie Kroes, here’s to hoping that her successor Prince Constantijn may check with Cook what’s going on with those developers. Another one of our first big articles in English was our report from the Tech5 awards where Tiqets didn’t stand a chance against German startup Lesara. In June the big news was that crowdfunding platform Symbid was closing its Amsterdam office after a very touch 2015. On the upside, the company managed to get a new €490K convertible loan.

July & August:

July and August was holiday time for a lot of companies, and therefore off-season when it comes to news. Yet our description of Nerderlands as a summer holiday for nerds may have changed people’s holiday plans. The announcement of the Nerderlands and LGBTech events drove a lot of traffic to our site. Good to see there is so much interest in the LGBT-community within the startup scene.

September & October :

Everybody likes a bit of good news and Dutch people like to brag. One and one makes two and therefore it makes perfect sense that our article about Amsterdam being the third most popular startup city in Europe was our biggest item in the month of September. As we just said, the Dutch like to brag, and the same goes for Dutch startups. Like Camarilla, who claimed a million users. But one of our reporters realized the numbers didn’t add up. The social startup has been very quiet in its response, perhaps the company only sends its press releases to intimate groups of a maximum of 15 friends these days? While reading the news on Camarilla our readers also noticed a headline about a new company called Ihaterecruiters, and how can you not click on that?

November:

The day after Trump’s shock win we decided to explain American startups how to move their company to the Netherlands. Very clickbait-like, we know and we plead guilty. With the Donald wrecking his havoc on the US economy this very useful article will likely stay one of our most read items throughout the next 4 years. Trump may be a joke but not a funny one. Jokes that we do think are funny our wordjokes. It looks like our readers appreciate them too, as many of them clicked on our item on 2Care4Kids.  This Dutch startup has a wordjoke in its title already, and in our item we decided 2write4more.

December:

Everybody loves a winner, and the only thing people love more than a winner is a winner explaining how he got to where he is. No wonder our interview with Picnic CEO Daniel Gebler delivered fresh traffic to our site like a Picnic-van delivering fresh groceries. In the slipstream of the success of this article, our reports on travel experience startup Cabture and staff swap startup Qwobble (both the company description and its name would be winning words with Scrabble) became big items as well. So there you have it, our twelve biggest items of the year. We can’t wait to see what exciting developments 2017 will bring!