Robert Scoble (born January 18, 1965) is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He later worked for Fast Company as a video blogger, and then Rackspace and the Rackspace-sponsored community site Building 43 promoting breakthrough technology and startups. Early life and education Scoble was born in New Jersey in 1965, and grew up about a kilometer from Apple Computer’s head office in Silicon Valley. In 1993, he dropped out without finishing his degree in journalism from San Jose State University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Career Microsoft In June 2003, Scoble accepted a position at Microsoft. The Economist described Scoble’s influence in its February 15, 2005 edition: On June 10, 2006, Scoble announced he was leaving Microsoft to join Podtech.net as vice president of media development with a higher salary accompanied by "a quite aggressive stock option" offer that would have made him wealthy if his new company had succeeded. According to Alexa Internet that day had the biggest traffic to his blog and PodTech over their lifetime. June 28, 2006 was his last day at Microsoft. Fast Company On December 11, 2007, while taking part in a panel discussion at the LeWeb3 Conference, he inadvertently leaked news (by loading up a post on TechCrunch) that he would be leaving PodTech on January 14, 2008, and was likely to join Fast Company. He acknowledged the news on his blog on December 12 but stated that he had not yet signed on with Fast Company. He did a video interview about his plans and leased studio space from Revision3. On March 3, 2008, Scoble launched FastCompany.tv with two shows: FastCompany Live and ScobleizerTV. He characterizes the first as "a show done totally on cell phones." The second is similar to his previous show on PodTech, only with better equipment and a camera operator. The show is recorded with two cameras in 720p HD. Rackspace and Building 43 On March 14, 2009, Scoble announced via his blog and on the Gillmor Gang that he was joining Rackspace. As part of his work there, he teamed up with the company to develop Building 43, a new content and social networking website aimed to help grow new startups and promote groundbreaking technology. In 2012, Building 43 was re-branded as Small Teams,