I started Twittering as username “Slice” back in early 2007. (I try to grab the username “Slice” on whatever new social-networking crap looks like it’s going to be popular.)
I started Slice, the blog, in late 2003. It consumed a fair amount of my nonworking life (and, yes, some of my work life, too — whenever I had downtime on the job, I’d answer Slice email or drop in a few lines of copy into drafts of pizzeria reviews). At some point, “Slice” and “Adam Kuban” were pretty much synonymous. Most of what I was doing offline was pizza, and whatever I wanted to say online had to do with pizza, and so the Slice site was just an extension of me and my interests. To the point that I have a certain group of friends who refer to me as “Slice” rather than “Adam.”
But I suppose that changed when Serious Eats bought Slice in late 2006. Still, I registered for Twitter to reserve the Slice username and then started playing around with the service. I Twittered for a bit, then saw no point in it and abandoned it, only to come back to Twitter with a vengeance a few weeks ago.
From the beginning, I had never really Twittered any pizza-related things, and when I came back to Twitter, I still didn’t. And then I started Twittering for Serious Eats, and then set up an A Hamburger Today Twitter account.
It probably made no sense for me to be tweeting personal items on the Slice account, but once SE and AHT were tweeting site-related things, the distinction between the personal and the pizza-blog was even more stark. And then a coworker here pointed out that I probably shouldn’t be tweeting personal items on the Slice account. And that was it. The jig was up. I abandoned the Slice twitter account for akuban, where I can blather pointless things to my heart’s content without fear of confusing new readers who might not be familiar with the Slice blog history.
I was a bit sad to have to let go of that account. As I said, Slice has been a large part of my identity for the last, oh, almost five years. That’s probably a bit pathetic or whatever, but who knows. Having to acknowledge that my baby is all growed up and has left the nest is sort of bittersweet, but the sale of Slice (and Burger) to Serious Eats was seriously good timing for a variety of reasons.
I am not, however, relinquishing my Slice Flickr account. I have way too many photos, comments, and “blogging” invested in that account. Ed Levine will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Oh, Adam, this really got through to me. In just 7 months of being “A Way to Garden,” not nearly the many years you’d been ‘Slice,’ I already feel so rattled by who’s-who and what’s-what stuff.
My Facebook is now full of friends who are six-degrees or farther, and so is my Twitter account. So I’ll admit it: I snagged my “real” name recently, too, on Twitter just in case I go schizoid (or the baby grows up, as you say). Thanks for sharing.
Funny you should mention Facebook and Twitter and the six-degrees thing. At first, I kept my Facebook limited to people I knew IRL—or who I knew only online but had a good e-relationship with. But then I started a Slice group on Facebook, and felt like I had to reciprocate on the friend adds from Slice fans. (The notion of “Slice fans” still weirds me out.)
With my new “akuban” Twitter account, I’m reciprocally following people and I figure once I hit a certain number and get a feel for who I’m following, I can then weed out later. Folks who tweet about airport delays: GONE! Folks who complain about work nonstop: OUTTAHERE!