Virtually Naked

I’m rather sad to be writing this, but this will be the last post on Virtually Naked. It has been fun, with thousands of people taking the opportunity to read the babble myself, and some others, have put together.

There are well over 600 posts on this website, and by the end it was getting at least 100 unique users everyday. Pittance by Dale and Staines standard, but for someone who only got involved in politics towards the end of university, and only joined the Liberal Democrats after leaving it (blame Sam Seaborne,), I find it both staggering and flattering that a not inconsequential number of people have read my opinions. Sometimes, some of you even agreed with them!

Writing this blog has given me opportunities I never imagined when I started – going to interesting events, meeting senior political figures and other very interesting people, appearing on panels to talk about blogging, and so and and so forth. Naturally then, there are a few people I want to thank: Thomas Hemsley and Sam Phripp, both of whom have contributed lovely pieces to this website, Matt Smith, who designed the logo, Joe Jordan, who’s company Crunchy Server kept the whole show on the road, and Helen Duffett, my fairy blog mother, for teaching me the tricks of the trade. Mostly though, thanks to everyone that has read VN, it would have all been rather pointless otherwise!

If you’re interested, here are a few of my VN faves:

Exclusively revealing that reports of a Lib Dem rebrand were utter rubbish

Danny Alexander, Nick Thornsby, and a baseball cap

Cleggophobia

In defence of David Laws, the not-for-profit expenses scapegoat

the most read post ever (thanks to Guido sharing it) on VN: Jenny Jones AM and phonehacking

and most recently: “Hello self-righteous moral high ground, we’re the Lib Dems, remember us?”

The main reason I am giving up this blog is simply a lack of time to do it properly. I have felt increasingly like I am churning out stories, not actually giving people something interesting to read. This site no longer feels original.

I will though not be giving up blogging completely. The nice people over at Total Politics have asked me to write regularly on their blog, and I may also be contributing stuff to the Huffington Post UK. You never know, they may even let me on Lib Dem Voice once in a while too! However, I don’t think the blogosphere should just be made up of uber-blogs, and you all know me well enough to know that sometimes I just can’t resist spouting an opinion, so feel free to follow me on Tumblr - http://charlotteahenry.tumblr.com/ where I will post, although not always about politics. I have also started a new site: www.digitalpolitico.net, which is looking exclusively at politics online. Amongst all that I have a company to run, and a life too! So its the end of VN, not me in the blogosphere (sorry to disappoint you!)

Ok, i’m stopping now as this has become stunningly self indulgent. Just one last thing:

“If you expose too much online, are you virtually naked?” [Kenneth Cole]

Thanks everyone, its been fun!

Charlotte

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Posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 at 10:35 pm in General   |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback URL