Now we are five: silicon.com celebrates fifth birthday

Has it really been that long?

Break out the jelly and ice cream - silicon.com is five years old. Our official birthday was 6 July and we believe that's cause to celebrate, especially as the past 60 months, in keeping with most dot-com businesses, have seen some ups and downs. The journey has taken us and our readers from a glitzy launch in London's Natural History Museum just before the height of the dot-com boom, to the low points of the tech slump, to a revitalised recent past as part of global publishers CNET, following an acquisition last summer. But whatever our stage of development there's always been one thing we've focused on - delivering essential news and views to more than 100,000 users of technology. We have also campaigned on behalf of our readers, fighting their corner when others won't let their voice be heard. And we'd be nothing without you our readers. These are the five best-read stories from the past five years - as chosen by you - and as you can see, it's all been deadly serious over the years: 1. 'Nigerian' money scam: What happens when you reply?
2. Pub-detecting watch set to change the world
3. Is your IT department full of dope smokers?
4. It looks like you're writing a P45: Gates sacks the paperclip
5. Sci-fi or sci-future? Hollywood technology scrutinised And then there are the exclusives. Over the years silicon.com has been behind a number of the biggest stories to rock the IT world and often it's down to tip-offs from you, our readers. 1. QXL closes down auction scam on UK site
2. BT blocked by spam blacklist
3. 1,800 shoppers' details exposed online
4. British Airways slashes IT staff - memo leaked to silicon.com
5. Powergen in security scandal - thousands of debit card details open to abuse And we continue to work with some of the leading names in the business, including columnists such as Peter Cochrane, Rene Carayol, David Taylor and Martin Brampton and respected experts from the likes of Bloor Research, Brunel University, Meta Group, Ovum and Quocirca. Over the years we have also brought you the ever-popular Weekly Round-Up , which has never struggled to entertain - even after 260 weeks. And if it's stats you're after... Over the past five years... silicon.com has written about Microsoft more than 3,948 times, which is 789 times per year, 65 times per month or more than twice per day! BT has featured 2,124 times over the years at an average of 424 times per year... and not all of it was negative either! There have been 779 stories about viruses, 463 about hackers, 297 about spam, 275 about Napster and 159 about porn. And we've no plans to let up. Here's to another five years.