[7][8] Lawver announced on 10 January 2009 that, with the help of Ficlets.com programmer Jason Garber and design team Viget Labs, a replacement site entitled Ficly.com would be launched.

At the time of the announcement, the Ficly front page consisted of a logo (subtitling the format "A better, shorter story"), a statement of not being active yet, and a form to sign up an e-mail address for notification of the official launch.

Lawver stated that the Ficly.com team is "slowly making progress" in constructing the site, referencing the possible launch date as "maybe by ficlets' 2nd birthday at the beginning of March".

[11] The site was created in late 2006 by AOL system architect and lead developer Kevin Lawver, who handled the back end website programming, as a repository for ficlets.

[14] An additional four-person AOL developer team provided time and effort in the creation of the website:[12] Science fiction author John Scalzi was a principal contributor to the site from its launch as a blogger, though he departed that position at the end of 2007.

[2][18][19][20] Mature Content was allowed within ficlet stories, but explicit pornography, obscenity and "hate speech" were banned.