Robert and Rocky ride again at Rackspace

Uncategorized 4 Minutes

TechCrunch just broke the news.

We will give more details about this news today on the Gillmor Gang. That show starts at 3 p.m. Pacific Time. Join us live at http://live.twit.tv or listen to the Gillmor Gang once the recording is up for more. I’ll also be on Ustream’s “Live from the Belmont at SXSW” channel tonight after 7 p.m. Pacific Time too.

When Rackspace told me they were hiring my producer, Rocky, and wanted to hire me too, to build a new kind of community it brought back thoughts of when I was at Microsoft working with Jeff, Charles, Lenn, and a cast of others on Channel 9. That was just a few weeks ago. Since then I’ve been on a whirlwind tour so I could study a bunch of different businesses. I visited a radio station. Facebook. A lonely startup up in Bellingham, Washington that’s now broadcasting live video on the Internet about themselves. Cisco. A coworking facility outside of Seattle which is where iPhone app developer Shazam is located. And quite a few others.

When I was getting a tour of KSCO, a 10,000-watt radio station in Santa Cruz, CA, owner Michael Zwerling showed me the transmission equipment. The brands on that equipment are long forgotten, if you ever knew them, but those companies were vital to pushing our culture and our ability to communicate further.

When I walked into the Northern Voice conference in Vancouver on this tour, and saw tons of people on TweetDeck, I knew we were in the middle of yet another radical shift that would be felt for years into the future (it was this same conference where I first noticed how important the Firefox browser and other social services like Flickr, which was developed in Vancouver, would become back five years ago).

It is pretty clear that the transmission equipment of the modern age is cloud computing. Whether you study Facebook, or Salesforce, or Amazon, you can see the tectonic shifts that are underway in our industry. Look at 12seconds.tv, a small company in Santa Cruz, for instance, just a few miles from those old radio transmission towers, and you see how they are using cloud bursting technology. One of their videos gets popular? Their algorithms move that video over to Amazon and move all the traffic over to Amazon too. This lets them host on their own very inexpensive equipment but protect their service from traffic spikes that occassionally happen.

But forget about the cloud for a moment. Everywhere I look I see other shifts in how we think of the Internet.

Google Latitude showed me that a new kind of location-based service is coming that will get millions of users in just a few days and will lay the bed for a new kind of interaction with your friends and with businesses near you.

Facebook is exploding, seeing 700,000 new users per day. I call Facebook “the velcro” of the Internet because it has so many little hooks to get you involved in that community. I sat next to Randi Zuckerberg at the World Economic Forum as she could ask Facebook’s users a question and get back tens of thousands of responses in just a minute or two. What is happening there is real and is changing everything.

I look at new video communities like Seesmic, that let me interact with people in real time using my webcam. I can post video of a building burning down just as well as just me ranting and raving.

Blogs, too, continue to change and shift. New commenting engines like Disqus or JS-Kit are changing how we can hook up our separate communities together.

Finally we see what’s happening on Twitter and friendfeed and it’s clear that this new world is building the equivilent of a world-wide talk show.

Add all these things up and they got me excited about doing something new.

That new thing is called Building 43.

Why “Building 43?” Well, if you visit Google’s campus, you’ll see that the building that houses their “master plan” is Building 43 (several of its founders sit in building 43 there too). Microsoft has a building 43, too, which is where many of the developers on Windows and other things sit. I always thought that was funny that both companies had a building 43. When I asked friendfeed and Twitter for interesting building 43 stories,
http://friendfeed.com/e/1c9e5999-47ed-4e35-b4ba-e66aea424ad8/I-m-collecting-
stories-about-Microsoft-and-Google/ I learned that Google’s numbering system predates it back to when SGI had its headquarters there.

Our “Building 43,” though, is not a place. It’s not even a website. It’s a decentralized community for people fanatical about the Internet. You’ll find us on Facebook, on Twitter, on friendfeed, on Ning, and lots of other places too.

“What about your videos, Scoble?”

You’ll see me continue my videos with companies and people who are fanatical about the Internet. But you’ll also find we’re focusing our cameras on people who build Internet experiences and learn more about how they did it rather than just what they did like I’ve done for the past few years. This is getting back to my roots as well, where I like learning how to build things.

Building 43 will be a lot more than just my videos, though. It’s a community, which means it’s not about me. It’s about you and what you’re trying to build. That will become clearer as we turn on rooms in building 43.

“Why Rackspace?”

When I first met the Rackspace team (they were one of the first interviews I did at Fast Company) I came back and said “Rackspace is one of my favorite companies.” http://scobleizer.com/2008/04/09/my-favorite-company-rackspace/
That’s because they were building their headquarters in a “bad” part of town and had a vision of revitalizing the neighborhood. We are taking that same spirit to the Internet during this tough economic time. By showing more people how to build businesses and have fun on the Internet we’re going to all win.

Rackspace is also one of the few companies in the world that has touchpoints with thousands of other companies. That’s important because I can study how the Internet is changing live and, thanks to these relationships, we can present to you how these sites were built and how you can build the same features into your own business sites and blogs.

So what is “building 43?” We are on the Gillmor Gang where we talked more about what we’re building. You should listen to that and visit http://www.building43.com and sign up to be notified when we turn on the full site.

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

Published

133 thoughts on “Robert and Rocky ride again at Rackspace”

  4. As someone who has known you back in those early Channel 9 days, I have to say this sounds like the ideal opportunity for you! Lots of luck. Where will you be working, from home?

    Like

  6. As someone who has known you back in those early Channel 9 days, I have to say this sounds like the ideal opportunity for you! Lots of luck. Where will you be working, from home?

    Like

  7. Congratulations on the new role, Robert; and much kudos for doing a deal where you can take Rocky with you. Keeping great teams together is a great thing to do, so Rackspace will benefit from that big-time; but it was also a great thing to do from the perspective of being a good person.

    Cloud computing is going to be massive in the next couple of years; so it’s going to be a wild ride for you, I’m sure! Look forward to seeing your coverage of the entire cloud computing industry.

    Congrats again! This is a really exciting move, I think!

    Like

  8. Congratulations on the new role, Robert; and much kudos for doing a deal where you can take Rocky with you. Keeping great teams together is a great thing to do, so Rackspace will benefit from that big-time; but it was also a great thing to do from the perspective of being a good person.

    Cloud computing is going to be massive in the next couple of years; so it’s going to be a wild ride for you, I’m sure! Look forward to seeing your coverage of the entire cloud computing industry.

    Congrats again! This is a really exciting move, I think!

    Like

  11. congratulations on your new gig Robert. Nice talking with you at Northern Voice.

    Are you also going to talk about green technology at Building43?

    Will you cover technology & politics?

    If you are here’s a story you might be interested in by one of my coaching clients who’s an IT consultant. She used flickr to expose how a US senator left his website directories open to everyone including a database that was eventually found out to contain confidential donor information of thousands of people.

    http://butyoureagirl.com/2009/03/14/interview-on-rachel-maddow-show-for-norm-coleman-database/

    Like

  12. congratulations on your new gig Robert. Nice talking with you at Northern Voice.

    Are you also going to talk about green technology at Building43?

    Will you cover technology & politics?

    If you are here’s a story you might be interested in by one of my coaching clients who’s an IT consultant. She used flickr to expose how a US senator left his website directories open to everyone including a database that was eventually found out to contain confidential donor information of thousands of people.

    http://butyoureagirl.com/2009/03/14/interview-on-rachel-maddow-show-for-norm-coleman-database/

    Like

  15. Pingback: Scobleizer: Technology, innovation, and geek enthusiasm » Blog Archive Robert and Rocky ride again at Rackspace « « Soft Machine

  28. CEO of a large corporate software monopoly headhunts the genius from a garage start-up and has him develop Synapse – the worldwide media distribution network that is supposed to launch from Building 21 and take over the world, but instead gets released as open source and brings down the evil software villan. [AntiTRUST movie]

    Large corporate internet company hires the genius Rocky and Robert and has them … do something with the worldwide media distribution network … from Building 43 and take over the world …. [Real life]

    Like

  29. CEO of a large corporate software monopoly headhunts the genius from a garage start-up and has him develop Synapse – the worldwide media distribution network that is supposed to launch from Building 21 and take over the world, but instead gets released as open source and brings down the evil software villan. [AntiTRUST movie]

    Large corporate internet company hires the genius Rocky and Robert and has them … do something with the worldwide media distribution network … from Building 43 and take over the world …. [Real life]

    Like

  37. Glad you’re continuing to build community Robert, and back with Rocky on the team!
    I’m thinking of the sci-fi movie spoof for Halloween: “It came from Building 43!”

    Like

  38. Pingback: Internet killed the newspaper star. The cloud lives. |

  43. Hey Robert! This sounds like a great thing and a really great fit for someone like you. I think what I have built here with Phreadz [http://phreadz.com] could also fit with what you’re doing pretty well in quite a few ways – being ‘fanatical about the web’.
    I’ll drop you a line somewhere and fill you in. Who knows? You might see the fit too? 🙂
    Best of luck!
    kosso

    Like

  44. Hey Robert! This sounds like a great thing and a really great fit for someone like you. I think what I have built here with Phreadz [http://phreadz.com] could also fit with what you’re doing pretty well in quite a few ways – being ‘fanatical about the web’.
    I’ll drop you a line somewhere and fill you in. Who knows? You might see the fit too? 🙂
    Best of luck!
    kosso

    Like

  45. great chatting with you briefly at northern voice 2009 during the rob cottingham / nancy white keynote

    i could be wrong but i don’t think adobe air even with tweetdeck will become a dominant platform for apps! as for tweetdeck, tweetgrid and others are already doing it in more lightweight and portable style

    Like

  46. great chatting with you briefly at northern voice 2009 during the rob cottingham / nancy white keynote

    i could be wrong but i don’t think adobe air even with tweetdeck will become a dominant platform for apps! as for tweetdeck, tweetgrid and others are already doing it in more lightweight and portable style

    Like

  53. Great to hear about your new gig Robert. I like that you’re going to be applying your prolific listening and interacting abilities to a business. And cloud computing is a sector that will benefit from the Scobleizer energy and perspective. Looking forward to what lies ahead.

    Like

  54. Great to hear about your new gig Robert. I like that you’re going to be applying your prolific listening and interacting abilities to a business. And cloud computing is a sector that will benefit from the Scobleizer energy and perspective. Looking forward to what lies ahead.

    Like

  55. Building 43? Poor branding already, most people would think Petty Racing and all things NASCAR.

    But too-cool-for-words “technetiumally” perfect, lightest element without a stable isotope. I mean, atomic #43, “tech-net-ium”, lightweight and unstable. That branding fits. 😉

    Like

  56. Building 43? Poor branding already, most people would think Petty Racing and all things NASCAR.

    But too-cool-for-words “technetiumally” perfect, lightest element without a stable isotope. I mean, atomic #43, “tech-net-ium”, lightweight and unstable. That branding fits. 😉

    Like

  59. Congratulations on the new role, Robert; and much kudos for doing a deal where you can take Rocky with you. Keeping great teams together is a great thing to do, so Rackspace will benefit from that big-time; but it was also a great thing to do from the perspective of being a good person.

    Like

  60. Congratulations on the new role, Robert; and much kudos for doing a deal where you can take Rocky with you. Keeping great teams together is a great thing to do, so Rackspace will benefit from that big-time; but it was also a great thing to do from the perspective of being a good person.

    Like

  71. “Facebook is exploding, seeing 700,000 new users per day.”

    I call BS. So, in a matter of 3 months Facebook will have new membership double the size of the United States?

    I’d love to see a link supporting this Robert.

    Oh, and congrats on the new job!

    Like

  72. “Facebook is exploding, seeing 700,000 new users per day.”

    I call BS. So, in a matter of 3 months Facebook will have new membership double the size of the United States?

    I’d love to see a link supporting this Robert.

    Oh, and congrats on the new job!

    Like

  75. Great hanging with you and The Dude last night. I thought our panel discussion on Ustream.tv was a mix of Bill Mahr and a Grateful Dead space jam… See you later for some more festivities!

    Like

  76. Great hanging with you and The Dude last night. I thought our panel discussion on Ustream.tv was a mix of Bill Mahr and a Grateful Dead space jam… See you later for some more festivities!

    Like

  77. Pingback: Penelope Trunk at SXSW: “Eight percent of companies seeking venture funding are from women, but most are from 20-something men who are single” « Josh Chandler
  80. Pingback: Dew Drop - March 15, 2009 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew
  83. Pingback: How Facebook, and Twitter should monetize | Dull thoughts in a sharp world.
  84. Pingback: How Facebook, and Twitter should monetize - Apartment Advice Blog | RentWiki.com

  85. Excited to learn more about Building 43, Robert! Welcome to the Rack…this time not as a visitor but as a Racker!

    Like

  86. Excited to learn more about Building 43, Robert! Welcome to the Rack…this time not as a visitor but as a Racker!

    Like

  87. Gr8 new Robert, reminds me of the early channel 9 days. btw, there is no signup option in there.

    Like

  88. Gr8 new Robert, reminds me of the early channel 9 days. btw, there is no signup option in there.

    Like

  97. Pingback: building 43 scoble rackspace scobleizer | The Tech News Blog
  98. Pingback: Robert Scoble’s New Job? Working for Me! | Affiliate Daily Review
  99. Pingback: Roundup: Checking out of Google Checkout, Surface 2.0 and more » VentureBeat
  100. Pingback: Ben Barren - Confessions of a Mad Man

  101. Building 43 is a community – what’s the business model? Or is the purpose to promote RackSpace?
    Maybe RackSpace needs Scoble more than Scoble needs RackSpace.
    Amazon Web Services is the challenger in the market.

    All the best with your new venture.

    Like

  102. Building 43 is a community – what’s the business model? Or is the purpose to promote RackSpace?
    Maybe RackSpace needs Scoble more than Scoble needs RackSpace.
    Amazon Web Services is the challenger in the market.

    All the best with your new venture.

    Like

  103. Engago: the business model is to get more businesses doing more things on the Internet. If we succeed in that then everyone gets more business, including Rackspace, which will win its share of Internet hosting competitions.

    Like

  104. Engago: the business model is to get more businesses doing more things on the Internet. If we succeed in that then everyone gets more business, including Rackspace, which will win its share of Internet hosting competitions.

    Like

  105. I enjoyed this article very much for it goes over the positive aspect that technology brings to our Society. There is nothing wrong with new scientific or technologic innovations as long as we use it for good things and thus far it looks like we are having more excellent dialogues, radio communication and great two-way conversations. These dialogues, blogs, social networks, videos, business, political and citizen journalism may very well one of the answers so that we could creatively forge a better society for all. Santa Cruz is an a great place for entrepreneurs and the sharing of new ideas. Its not a surprise to see more community projects developing in that area of the United States.

    Like

  106. I enjoyed this article very much for it goes over the positive aspect that technology brings to our Society. There is nothing wrong with new scientific or technologic innovations as long as we use it for good things and thus far it looks like we are having more excellent dialogues, radio communication and great two-way conversations. These dialogues, blogs, social networks, videos, business, political and citizen journalism may very well one of the answers so that we could creatively forge a better society for all. Santa Cruz is an a great place for entrepreneurs and the sharing of new ideas. Its not a surprise to see more community projects developing in that area of the United States.

    Like

  107. Pingback: Austin and SXSW | Easily Amused for No Apparent Reason
  114. Pingback: Rackspace Cloud Lounge Party at SXSW Interactive 2009

  117. “the business model is to get more businesses doing more things on the Internet. If we succeed in that then everyone gets more business, including Rackspace, which will win its share of Internet hosting competitions.”

    Hate to break it to you, but that isn’t close to being a business model. You apparently, or maybe obviously?, have no P&L plan. Nowhere in your plan do you explain how Rackspace will make money from your heretofore money-sucking adventures. And in this economy, how you will make money is clearly the most important aspect of any business plan.

    What you describe is some high level strategy. And a fairly generic one at that. You apparently have no quantitative way of measuring how you will be successful.

    If I were management at Rackspace, it’s at this point I would start worrying if I were going to end up throwing money down a rathole in order to satisfy some web nerd’s ego. If you are serious about thinking you have a viable business model, you need to show at what point your “strategy” starts turning into money. For example, how many unwatchable videos will result in new business for RackSpace? 1:1, 10:1, 100:1? Again, if you have no clue, the you better assume RackSpace will eventually want an answer that justifies your existence. Seems this is what happened at FastCompany. Your globetrotting and lame video making wasn’t generating enough income to off set your expenses.

    Like

  118. “the business model is to get more businesses doing more things on the Internet. If we succeed in that then everyone gets more business, including Rackspace, which will win its share of Internet hosting competitions.”

    Hate to break it to you, but that isn’t close to being a business model. You apparently, or maybe obviously?, have no P&L plan. Nowhere in your plan do you explain how Rackspace will make money from your heretofore money-sucking adventures. And in this economy, how you will make money is clearly the most important aspect of any business plan.

    What you describe is some high level strategy. And a fairly generic one at that. You apparently have no quantitative way of measuring how you will be successful.

    If I were management at Rackspace, it’s at this point I would start worrying if I were going to end up throwing money down a rathole in order to satisfy some web nerd’s ego. If you are serious about thinking you have a viable business model, you need to show at what point your “strategy” starts turning into money. For example, how many unwatchable videos will result in new business for RackSpace? 1:1, 10:1, 100:1? Again, if you have no clue, the you better assume RackSpace will eventually want an answer that justifies your existence. Seems this is what happened at FastCompany. Your globetrotting and lame video making wasn’t generating enough income to off set your expenses.

    Like

  119. Pingback: What you can learn from Lauren Luke and the video conversation - Ian Crocombe - Blogs - Brand Republic
  120. Pingback: People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: April 2, 2009
  121. Pingback: Change is good. « Verlen Larsen’s “The Good Stuff” Blog

  123. Thanks for sharing this information. I found it very informative as I have been researching a lot lately on practical matters such as you talk about…

    Like

  125. Excellently written article, if only all bloggers offered the same content as you, the internet would be a much better place. Please keep it up! Cheers.

    Like

  126. “Facebook is exploding, seeing 700,000 new users per day.”I call BS. So, in a matter of 3 months Facebook will have new membership double the size of the United States?

    Like

  132. Rackspace has some room to grow in the main development market of servers, a good friend bought a rack from theme , co-located for a fitness site (muscle main or something like that) and never had it set up right. steroids

    Like

  133. <h2 align=”center”>Don't Do For Ugg Boots UK</h2>–>If you own a pair of Ugg boots, ugg classic short, be sure to take proper care of them and clean them regularly. With the proper care and cleaning, Uggs can last several years or even a lifetime.You love sheepskin footwear and ugg classic because they are comfortable and fashionable. How to keep them looking great? The following are a few tips to help you to know what you don't do for your natural beauty and functionality uggs.–>Tip one, don't store your cardy boots ugg in a light place. Because they can bleach in extreme sunlight.–>Tip two, ugg boots should not be worn in extremely moist or muddy conditions as moisture can cause problems.–>Tip three, don't clean the exterior of? your uggs knightsbridge with a hard brush or cloth at first time dirty. –>Tip four, trying not to saturate the sheepskin footwear with water, especially warm or hot water. And don't clean them in a washing machine or dryer, this will cause problems with shrinkage and can adversely change the sheepskin.–>Tip five, if need, except specially detergent for sheepskin product, just like classic ugg mini, don't use any wool detergent. Also don't use high concentration cleaning solution.–>Some suggestions for you to protect your natural beauty and functionality uggs long periods of time. And also hoping to help you solving your hesitation, spending little time to know more information about ugg boots.–>All rights reserved, reprint, please specify source comes from http://www.goodugg.co.uk —bailey button,ugg knightsbridge boots,cardy boots,ugg tall classic

    Like

Comments are closed.