The most popular stories of 2010

Being an offspring of the erstwhile Business daily, when looking at the most popular stories of the year on Emirates24|7, one would expect to see a number of business stories, since that still is one of the key focus areas for the site.

But, as it turns out, business people have general interests too – and if there was ever any doubt about that, our ‘most popular stories’ list for 2010 should dispel it for good.

As the saying goes, numbers don’t lie (not most of the time, anyways). So, based on the number of views received by a particular story, our ‘top stories’ list has an array of stories you’d expect to be there – and some others, well, completely offbeat.

At No. 10 on the most popular list is the one story that you'll expect to find in there: Sheikh Mohammed receives Tom Cruise. The adulation that HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, commands, combined with Tom Cruise’s celeb power was enough to push this story to the most popular list.

Often, a story generates loads of reader interest due to what might be termed as ‘intrigue value’. Our most popular story of the year, for one, talks about gold imports turning to dust on arrival in the UAE. The story, simply, was that several tonnes of gold imported into the country from some of the dubious sources turns out to be fake – at times, pure yellow dust – causing losses worth millions of dirhams and high levels of stress to the victims.

Now that was a great story, with all the usual ingredients of what makes a good read on the Web – a bit of suspense in the headline, a lot of meat in the copy – and it was exclusive. On top of it, the story implied by the headline seemed so outlandish it would be hard to pass it up. Most of you didn’t.

But then there are stories that are on the list for perhaps being incredible.

Take, for instance, the one about three cows that wandered onto the railroad tracks and derailed an overnight Lisbon-Madrid train, disrupting rail traffic for the whole day. Now while that story had nothing to do with the UAE or the Gulf region (or, indeed, business), it made it to (or rather wandered onto) the top-read-in-2010 list at No. 7 on the basis of its sheer incredulity.

Another incredible yet true story was the one about the 16th marriage of 64-year-old superdad (he is, after all, the father of 88 kids) who vowed to stop marrying after fathering a hundred children (please, do not try this at home). The story was the second-best-read story of the year, based on its sheer shock value, perhaps.

Then again, certain keywords are bound to get you ‘hits’.

Put ‘holidays’ and ‘private sector’ in the headline, and you can almost see the online populace going for that mouse with anticipation on their faces.

This headline was No. 6 for the year: Private sector looking at six-day Eid holidays. The fact that there was a possibility of the Eid holidays being combined with the official weekend got quite a few of us excited. Some comments were quite interesting too, urging the government to award the same number of days in holidays to the private and the public sector.

Controversy is another great traffic-puller, and so was the case with the WikiLeaks issue. The New WikiLeaks website now available in UAE story shot up to being the No. 3 on our list in practically no time.

While the new WikiLeaks website was apparently facing some technical glitches and was inaccessible through certain browsers for a few hours on the day it was launched, our story that clarified that the site was available once those glitches seemed to have been ironed out received global fame in a matter of minutes when WikiLeaks decided to tweet a link to it.

There was no devil in the detail, but that didn’t stop readers and WikiLeaks’ Twitter followers from retweeting the story around to so many of their peers that it went viral and ended up in the top-read list by default.

Also controversial was another of our exclusive stories about illegal sex toys being sold in the UAE. This was a sharp investigative story that exposed the gall of some of the offenders in the UAE who were flouting the law. The story became an instant hit the moment it went online, and ended up as ninth on the list of the top 10 most popular stories of the year.

Here's Emirates247.com's Top 10 list for 2010, as made by you:

1. Tons of gold imports turn to dust on arrival

2. 64-year-old father of 88 to now wed 18-year-old

3. New WikiLeaks website now available in UAE

4. Twins can see through each others’ eyes

5. Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Dubai kills crew

6. Private sector looking at six-day Eid holidays

7. Cows trigger train derailment

8. 80-year-old man marries 14-year-old

9. Illegal sex toys sold openly in UAE

10. Sheikh Mohammed receives Tom Cruise
 

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