The end of the SlashChick era, and the beginning of something even better.

Last month, as I realized the final quarter of 2007 was approaching, I immersed myself in thinking about what I want to do with myself over the next year. 2007 marked the end of several things for me, and notably, the end of one thing I haven’t said much about yet: my SlashChick online persona.

I realized last month that I want to get into blogging a lot more heavily in 2008, and “SlashChick” just didn’t fit me any more. It marked my time on Slashdot, and I don’t spend time on Slashdot any more. It also had connotations of “slash” fiction (male-on-male sex scenes derived from popular movies), which I wasn’t aware of when I created the persona, and to which I don’t have any desire to be attached. I needed a new online persona — one that I was comfortable promoting, one that I didn’t have to explain, and one that most people could type easily if I said on the phone (people had tons of trouble with “slashchick”.) I put a lot of thought into this, since I felt the domain I picked would stick with me for a long time, and I didn’t want to buy a domain and regret the decision later.

I settled, finally, on erica.biz. The domain was owned by a typosquatter, excuse me, “domain name speculator”, who was willing to sell it for several hundred dollars. After a couple weeks of negotiation, he came down to a price I was okay with and I decided to buy it. Why did I pick erica.biz? Well, Simpli is a .biz and that’s part of what defines the company — we’re not a .com; we’re not typical; it’s a short and easy name to remember and type. erica.com is also owned by a speculator (after being a porn site for a long time — I wanted to buy the domain name back in 1998 and it was owned by a porn site then), but this speculator didn’t respond to my requests to buy the domain, and probably would have wanted an outrageous price for it. Simpli was one of the first companies to use .biz successfully back in 2001, and now I will be one of the first people to use a .biz to promote…myself.

What happens next? The domain is mine and it’s in the process of being transferred to my eNom account. Currently it still points to the typosquatter’s page, but that will change in the next couple of days. ALL of the content you currently see on SlashChick.com will move to erica.biz. That is a huge undertaking, but one I’m up for. I’m hoping also to launch a new design for erica.biz at that time to coincide with moving everything off this domain, but don’t expect anything super-fancy — I’ll probably start out with a basic WordPress theme with a few customizations, like I have here, and add to it or change it as I go. Most places where I have accounts will also change to reflect my new handle, “ericabiz”…and I’ll add those places onto my new website as links. The new website will also have more information about me, like a better “About” page and information about my public speaking. Finally, it will be a portal to all the projects I’m working on or am interested in.

I’m very excited about this change. It’s been in process for a while now, and it’s finally coming to fruition. November 19 marks my 3-year “blogiversary” on SlashChick.com. My goal is to have all the posts moved over to erica.biz and only a placeholder here on slashchick.com by that day. I’ll make an announcement once I’m ready!