How to abandon a USP, in one easy lesson

Look closely, and you might notice some­thing different.

If you arrived at this URL expect­ing to find this site’s usual front page con­tain­ing links to three blogs — Writ­ing, Scrib­bling and Enga­ging — then your eyes are not deceiv­ing you. An Unre­li­able Wit­ness is now just one blog. How very main­stream and tra­di­tional of me.

Why? Oh, because.

The three blog format was my Unique Selling Point. My Big Idea. A big idea but, as it turned out and as I’m now pre­pared to admit, a rather imprac­tical one. I accept defeat. It didn’t quite work. Some parts got updated more than oth­ers. I some­times didn’t know which sec­tion was most appro­pri­ate for a par­tic­u­lar entry. So the big idea is no more. I have killed it. Or rather them. The three blogs, that is. Sorry about that. Oh, don’t cry. It’s really not worth get­ting upset about. It’s only a website.

All the con­tent has now been moved into the inter­min­able mish-mash of entries that you can see here, fea­tur­ing mis­cel­laneous life events, post-it notes, unsent let­ters, musical thoughts, dream plays and other ideas that come into my dis­eased mind at inop­por­tune moments.

Ques­tions? Yes, you must have them.

First: what does this mean for you, the vis­it­ing reader skim­ming your way through your daily intake of frequently-updated per­sonal websites?

Well, I think you should prob­ably pre­pare your­self to put up with a cer­tain degree of eclecticism. If, for instance, you only ever vis­ited one of the three blogs because you didn’t like those weird stor­ies about Jesus rid­ing a bicycle through my flat or didn’t rate my taste in music and lit­er­at­ure, then I can only offer my sin­cerest apo­lo­gies that you’re going to have to grit your teeth and endure all those kinds of entries in future. Here. In one place.

Second, if you were kind enough to link to one par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of An Unre­li­able Wit­ness in the past, I would be grate­ful if you could change the web address to point to the much sleeker and snap­pier URL of www.unreliablewitness.com. And if you’re one of those fash­ion­able people who browse blogs via feeds of one sort or other, you’ll need to update your feedreader of choice. Details can be found in the menu to your right — under ‘Feeds’, fun­nily enough.

So, wel­come to the all new An Unre­li­able Wit­ness, fea­tur­ing the same old mean­ing­less verb­os­ity but in one con­veni­ent loc­a­tion. Hmm, I’m going to have to work on craft­ing that into a rather more appeal­ing strapline.

Up until now, even if you couldn’t think of any­thing mem­or­able about An Unre­li­able Wit­ness, you could at least say that it was three blogs in one. That’s gone, I’m afraid. Gone and for­got­ten. How­ever, if you can think of some­thing new and equally mem­or­able to say about this site, do please let me know. After all, a Unique Selling Point is so import­ant these days, wouldn’t you agree?

As you were, then.

Comments: 29

    I prefer it like this. straight­for­ward and no faff­ing about.

    your unique selling point is your writ­ing, which, in my opin­ion, is fantastic.

    Marcos | 03.19.07, 21:11

    Thank good­ness you came to your senses. Three in one is the new blog.

    Cosi Fan Tutte | 03.19.07, 22:58

    So the Trin­ity resolves into Unity.

    Could be theology.

    Or bicycle oil.

    robin | 03.19.07, 23:29

    To be hon­est, I don’t care if it’s one blog, three blogs or sev­en­teen blogs, as long as it has your writ­ing (which it does).

    Mar­cos is right, your unique ‘selling point’ (though I don’t know why a blog needs a ‘selling point’) is your mar­vel­lous writ­ing and won­der­ful thoughts. So there.

    Little Lead Pencil | 03.20.07, 05:35

    Three-in-one, one-in-one, a multitude-in-one, it doesn’t mat­ter all that much. And I have no com­plaints about eclecticism here. I am madly in love with your writ­ing and if I could have babies with it, I would.

    Lizza | 03.20.07, 06:08

    An Unre­li­able Wit­ness: because less is more

    andre | 03.20.07, 11:57

    Well, it’s prob­ably for the best. It was a fun exper­i­ment while it las­ted though.

    Pete | 03.20.07, 12:25

    It’s per­fect!

    Annie | 03.20.07, 12:42

    I don’t know, next week it’ll be all extolling the vir­tues of Note­pad and “I code all this by hand, you know!”

    Jack | 03.20.07, 14:36

    “Take three blogs into the shower? Not me, I just wash and go with the Unre­li­able Witness.”

    Tried to replace the word wash with some­thing which rhymes but could only come up with slosh (?), go posh, read tosh (!) or say “Gosh!”.

    The Goldfish | 03.20.07, 16:56

    Thank you all for your kind words. Any­one who does feel cheated by being offered less blogs than they were ori­gin­ally prom­ised can, of course, claim their money back.

    I will never proudly pro­claim that I code everything by hand using Note­pad. Mainly because I want web­sites and blog­ging to be even more auto­mated — right down to writ­ing the entries, in fact.

    And Gold­fish? It occurs to me that the word “wash” could have been replaced with “toss”. But then only someone with my filthy mind could pos­sibly sug­gest that “I just toss and go with the Unre­li­able Witness”.

    An Unreliable Witness | 03.20.07, 17:27

    Well done — very sleek! Glad you still have the smart little red strips at the top, & I’m think­ing of the New Eclecticism as an oppor­tun­ity to read bits I might have missed before…

    Ms Baroque | 03.20.07, 18:58

    Hmm, I think for that you’d need to use much filthier lan­guage and post more pic­tures, more expli­cit pic­tures of tinned food products, and give us pro­files for them like “Value Baked Beans, 19 wks from Tesco, likes to be warmed up on a gentle heat, given a quick stir and served on toast.”

    The Goldfish | 03.20.07, 18:59

    Thank fuck.

    Gordon | 03.20.07, 23:09

    ;-)

    Gordon | 03.20.07, 23:10

    (was wor­ried you might take a fence)

    Gordon | 03.20.07, 23:10

    And only the other day did I setup a triple-blog-style feed of my three sites, all in your hon­our, as I thought yours was such a good idea. Plus I thought you might need a bit of com­pany, see­ing as you were the tri-blog pioneer.

    Then you go and change, and I am left all alone.

    I’m now some­what jaded.

    Timbo | 03.21.07, 01:10

    Timbo, try not to think of it so much as me leav­ing you all alone in the world of tri-blogging, but instead that I am passing on the mantle to you. Go forth and prosper. Or something.

    An Unreliable Witness | 03.21.07, 01:29

    Cor, so three into one does go with no remainders!

    I think your new USP could be if you wiggle a mouse over your ban­ner it looks a bit like a barbers pole on it’s side.

    Angela M | 03.21.07, 12:11

    i luv u Dawn!!!!

    Kafka | 03.21.07, 18:39

    In my opin­ion, this is Bet­ter. There can be no dissent.

    Well, there could be, but there shouldn’t be.

    Katy Newton | 03.21.07, 21:22

    22nd!!!

    andre | 03.21.07, 21:23

    23rd!!!

    Mind you, I’ll have you know that I once received 57 com­ments. Yes, 57! Though I did have to saw half of my left leg off to achieve such a feat. It seemed like a small price to pay.

    An Unreliable Witness | 03.21.07, 21:46

    the things we do for our public

    andre | 03.22.07, 15:46

    I’m with the majority.

    Although I’ll con­tinue to read you even if you turn your blog into a mys­ter­i­ous labry­inth of ‘secret egg’ links and invis­ible type — this does make it a hell of a lot easier to enjoy.

    In that whole­some, Buddhist way.

    :)

    Morgan | 03.22.07, 15:48

    Hell. With ref­er­ence to com­ment 23, I’ve just real­ised that it was the right leg. The right. Right?

    Easy mis­take to make. Right leg. Left leg. So confusing.

    An Unreliable Witness | 03.22.07, 16:07

    Did you check to see which leg it was in the mir­ror and then get a bit confused?

    andre | 03.22.07, 16:44

    A lot easier. It was always worth the effort, but effort it was.

    looby | 03.26.07, 09:28

    I’ve worked it out now. Some of use are just slow. Hell’s bells, how embar­rass­ing, though it took a little less time than chan­ging Andre’s url did? :)

    And the Christ on a bike entry remains my favour­ite, for some reason.

    Cheerful One | 04.10.07, 18:54

Leave a comment