Building 43, Scoble & rackspace

So, the word is out – Robert Scoble’s new venture is with hosting provider rackspace.

Scoble and rackspace

Why rackspace? According to the scobleizer blog and this interview with Michael Arrington at techcrunch, Scobel’s decision to work for rackspace was driven by two things. Firstly, he says it’s because he was massively impressed when he visited their offices last year. Secondly, the fact that he will be setting up an interesting project, called “building 43.”

Scoble and building 43

According to the building 43 project’s holding page, building 43 is going to be “a place for people fanatical about the Internet.”

Scoble told techcrunch:

..our content will be available via Creative Commons so you can use our videos or photos or other media on your own sites. You can cut it up, edit it, or claim it as your own. Second, Building 43 is not a place. It’s not a website. It’s a distributed community and you’ll engage with Building 43 on your favorite social network. No need to visit http://www.building43.com at all. Plus, we’ll have new videos that you can interact with via technology like that available on 12seconds.tv and seesmic.com so you can post your own video tips or techniques or demos.

Why Scoble chose the name Building 43

I was chatting with Scoble on FriendFeed last week about building 43 – though had no idea at the time why he was so interested in it.  According to his blog, the name comes from a building at Google, which contains Google’s master plan and the offices of “several of Google’s founders.”  Apparently (and a little weirdly) Microsoft ALSO had a building 43 when Scoble worked there.  I am thinking of getting one too!

Building 43 is just a holding page at the moment. The project sounds extremely interesting and an ideal outlet for Scoble’s ability to produce an insane amount of cross platform content.  As soon as some more details become available, you will find them here.