Top 5 Most Read French Tech articles of 2012

Top 5 Most Read French Tech articles of 2012
Innovation

now6With the year wrapping, and many looking back on the year’s events, Rude Baguette takes a look back at the year’s “greatest hits.” Often unrelated to the most talked about topics in France this year, these articles spread quickly across the web, reflecting a voice or a story that readers felt needed to be told. They are also, not surprisingly, some of our longer articles, as Rude Baguette has defined itself not only by being first to break a story about French tech, but as the only news source that provides in-depth analysis:

  1. DragonBox: gaming children into learning algebra – By far our most-read article, DragonBox’s half scandenavian, half French mobile app development team We Want to Know picked up a fair amount of attention this year when they came out with a mobile app game whose rules lines up with the rules to Algebra, meaning that as you advanced through the levels game, you were actually learning Algebra.
  2. Paris vs. Berlin – The Facts you can’t ignore: Half-German half-French serial entrepreneur Nicolas Metzke struck a chord with Parisians and Berliners alike when he compared the two cities after attending NEXT Berlin earlier this year.
  3. The Pigeon Movement – A rallying cry for French startups: Just two days after the creation of the infamous Facebook group that turned into a startup movement, Rude Baguette was the first English-language news source to cover the movement that ultimately made headlines across most major publications. This very article was sited not only by GigaOm, TechCrunch, and other notable Tech publications, but even by l’Express, a well-known French language news publication. We ultimately followed the story through its growth to a 70K+ movement, and its eventual closure as its message became muddled by people looking to use the movement as an excuse for political attacks.
  4. 4 French startup names that really don’t work in English: This article quickly went viral, likely reflecting the general sentiment that startup names in French just leave something to the imagination. Even the most popular French startups – Criteo, Deezer, Dailymotion, etc. – lack the creative grasp of startups like Twitter, Foursquare, Google & more. The articles points out just 4 examples – Eatyourbox, DooDoo.com (who have since changed their name to UpLike.fr & raised 400K€), edjing, and Shiroube (you have to see their logo to understand).
  5. Here are the 20 startups selected for Seedcamp Paris: just one of many exclusives that Rude Baguette brought readers this year, our detailed breakdown of the Seedcamp Paris teams, as well as the event itself, caught the attention of readers not just in France, but around the world.
  6. France excels at R&D, but Academia is overdue for disruption: that’s right, we included a 6th article in our Top 5 list! Practically tied for 5th place was guest author Regis Behmo‘s article on the ups and downs of R&D in France. France is historically known for its excellent engineering & computer science R&D, putting out some of the brightest minds in several fiedls; however, Regis touched on a subject close to the hearts of many readers, as evident by the article-long comments that came pouring in affirming the article’s main points.

We’ve also published a report on the top 10 companies we talked about this year – check it out here!
What was your most memorable article from Rude Baguette this year?