I’ve even got a post on the new site.  But it isn’t my site.  It belongs to the community that builds it.  You can join that community.  Learn how here.

It’s been a blast working on the site.  This is something completely fresh – from the graphics to the design.  The content and the idea behind the site – all new.

My employer, Rackspace, is backing the site.  It is an interesting challenge.  It has been from the day we decided to hire Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica.  Interesting because the idea is so unique that it is hard to describe.  A site that has no revenue model.  No marketing message.  It exists to help people use the new Internet to improve their own websites.  Particularly businesses.  If we help a business increase sales 10-15%, perhaps they will hire another employee.  Perhaps the increase in their sales means on of their vendors needs to hire more help.

Perhaps we can help the struggling economy one helpful post at a time.  Who knows?  Since it’s not been done in this way before – nobody knows.  But we have sure busted ass trying to find out!

I encourage you to go look at building43.  I am very proud of what the team has built.  I am proud to have my name associated with it.  And I am very, very happy that Robert and Rocky are with us on this project.  On paper, they work for me – but in actuality, we all work for the same purpose.  We all have a burning desire to build something truly meaningful – something truly helpful.

Let me know what you think!

Rob

The service is ugly (to me).  It has all kinds of crap I don’t care about in my feed.  It just isn’t as immediate or intimate as Twitter.  At least to me. YMMV.

And when Yuvi found a bug in the application, that extended through to the API, I sent a tech support question and got a reply that said they were out of office until Monday.  Five days?  A Startup that goes out of pocket for five days?  I don’t like that. (The bug – you can only view the last 11 days of your history.  Even if you click on day 15, you see results from day 11.  API "works" the same way.).

Robert is someone I consider to be a friend, but I also know he is a passionate guy and when he likes something, he doesn’t stop talking about it – until he gets tired of it, or he finds the next great thing.

I focus on things that help me, or the people who hire me, make money.  Twitter offers that to me.  FriendFeed looks more like "Feeding Frenzy".

And I am not new to social networking – do a search for kr8tr on Google.  There are over 10,000 hits.  I think damn near all of them are mine.  I "get" social networking, and I have for a long time.

But I don’t "get" FriendFeed – it just isn’t near as useful to me as Twitter is.  Twitter is clean, concise, and IMMEDIATE.  FriendFeed is "busy", "ugly" and "non-responsive"/

And it is very easy for me to filter people in or out.

I think FriendFeed is either a flash in the Scoble pan, or they dramatically retool themselves.  Or else they get the Scoble’s of the world – but not people like be.  Not people that actually need to extract a value from a site.

And they don’t answer email from developers.  Sorry – that sucks.  Twitter has responded to me in the past.

Which API will I trust to build an application on?

Do you think you know WEB 2.0?  This Crossword shows you the Web 2.0 company "Tagline".  You need to complete the puzzle with the company names!

Can you complete the puzzle?

Click on the image to open the puzzle in a new window.

But Comcast, I really don’t like.  So as soon as I heard the news, I sent my last message on the Plaxo system:

It reads, "Robert is trying to figure out how to delete his Plaxo/Comcast account".

And I did figure it out:

The rumors were accurate: Comcast will announce their acquisition of social contact list Plaxo today. Financial terms are not being disclosed, but the purchase price is between $150 and $170 million. Plaxo, which was founded in 2002, has raised just under $30 million in venture capital.

Confirmed: Comcast Bought Plaxo, Deal Closed Today

Today’s San Antonio Express News has a rather large (9×8 inch) photo of me on the cover of the business section.  L.A. Lorek (lalorek on Twitter)wrote the article (link below).

Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Express News.

I scanned part of the article because the online version doesn’t have the sidebars the printed article has (and my friend Ike Pigott (ikepigott on Twitter).

Click the images for larger views.

I like the article about Twitter because it focuses on how useful Twitter can be as a business development tool.  I’ve certainly met the most interesting people via Twitter!

Rob La Gesse, a San Antonio-based technology entrepreneur and consultant known as kr8tr on Twitter, has recruited employees and launched a start-up company using Twitter.

MySA.com: Business