Rackspace Sponsors Web 2.0 Info Site

Amidst the confusion of how to best make use of rapidly emerging web 2.0 technologies, a new online community, sponsored by web-hosting provider Rackspace (www.rackspace.com), endeavors to track the latest trends and help companies in all fields move their business operations into the 21st Century.

Launched last week, Building43 (www.building43.com) is designed to show how companies can make use of all the new online tools launching every day. Created by Rackspace's Rocky Barbanica, Rob Lagesse and Robert Scoble, Building43 seeks to answer questions such as "How do I use Twitter? How do I use Facebook? Do I need to develop an iPhone app? What technology am I not using that could help grow my business?"

Scoble, a popular blogger (www.scobleizer.com), technology evangelist and co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, has posted on his blog that the lead-up to Building43's launch has taken up a lot of his efforts. "I'm up at 5am to help the team put the finishing touches on the site and thought it would be a good place to start my blog back up," Scoble posted. "Sorry for disappearing from my long-form blog for a while. I just didn't have the energy to write more than 140 characters or so."

Building43, however, will not only focus on connected high-tech professionals such as Scoble, who create loads of social content, but rather help regular companies and individuals take advantage of technologies that are driving business. One of the first posted items, for instance, is an interview with Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, where he gives his dad some ideas for how to use the Internet to promote his dentistry business.

In a Rackspace blog post, the company notes that its customers frequently ask what else Rackspace can do to help them. "There is one theme that comes up more than any other: Help me grow my business! While this strays from our core of offering on-demand computing services, today we are pleased to announce something that should help," Rackspace said.