This is a comparison of the blogs of three ‘web celebrities’ from the Netherlands over time. There are many Dutch ‘web celebrities’, but I want to focus on the famous internet journalists from our country. 

I looked at two basic things when selecting these three characters. First; they must have had exposure on mass media platform such as radio or tv, second I think it’s important to specifically look at our internet veterans, I narrowed the search down to candidates with a ‘internet reputation’ for over five years.

After I defined the candidates that, indeed appear on dutch national radio or tv, and are internet veterans, I found three characters. (in random order)

1. Francisco van Jole

2. Boris Veldhuizen van Zanten

3. Vincent Everts

Truth is, the reputation of any celebrity can be frightening. That’s why it’s so fun to see their history and reflect to their times at the ‘bottom’ as well. It allows us to agree that we all have potential to grow and feel better to seek accomplishments like these. 

Francisco van Jole, Self proclaimed as the ‘Internet Journalist’

Francisco van Jole is a Dutch journalist, who specialized himself in the internet. He has a weekly appearance in a column on the dutch television and hosts various shows on national radio.

The website of Francisco van Jole (www.2525.com) goes back for almost 10 years, according to the wayback machine.

The weblog today is build with Movabletype, the articles reach back as far as 2004. The posts are about personal experiences, project announcements and updates, and work (journalist) related articles.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, self proclaimed ‘The internet Entrepreneur’

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten organizes web-events and supports web 2.0 startups, together with his collegues at Meganova. He has increased his appearances as a journalist over the years and Boris has appeared on a Dutch national TV news broadcast about the takeover of Hyves. He also appears in famous Dutch magazines such as Sprout and Quote.

The appearance on the internet (www.bomega.com) can be traced until 2002, this first screenshot is representing the website hosted at the domain five years ago. The site represented the purpose of a business card, current projects and a list of interesting books and movies.

The weblog of Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten as today. The site is generated by the wordpress, Boris currently posts information about openidea’s and personal stories. The amounts of posts have decreased due to the rise of Twitter and the change of blogging focus. (launch of thenextweb)

Vincent Everts, Self proclaimed as ‘Passionate for gadgets’

Is a Dutch internet entrepreneur and columnist on internet and tech. Vincent made various appearances on dutch national TV in tech related topics, and hosts a radio show on a Dutch national news radio channel. Recently he started to create video’s about his travel and company visits.

The internet appearence of Vincent (www.vincente.nl) can be traced back for eight years.

Vincent did not change to a blogging platform over the years, and continues to create his personalized website. The created the current website using Frontpage.

 *Vincent e-mailed, there is a CMS behind the site. There is just a mention of Frontpage generator in the source code*

Vincente.nl is generated with an CMS from www.digitalworks.nl. The layout have not changed that much over the last years. This could be caused by his increasing blogging efforts for websites such as http://www.marketingfacts.nl and http://www.dutchcowboys.nl. Recenly, Vincent started publishing video’s on http://vincenteverts.blip.tv , http://www.fd.nl and http://www.telegraaf.nl.

Summing up

Is it essential for a web celebrity to have a current website that looks according to the latest trends? For Boris and Vincent, it seems that their personal blog is getting less attention due to focus on other projects. That said, props to Vincent, Boris and Franciso by building great reputation and providing us with their personal thoughts and ideas.

Let me ask you, does the website of a ‘web celebrity’ matter, and which Dutch ‘web celebrities’ did I forget?

These screenshots were created with the internet wayback machine

I hope you like that post!

Tags: blogging, Dutch, Journalists, The Netherlands