Rackspace Alum Targets Social Networking

Richard Yoo is known to many observers of the hosting and data center industries as a co-founder and CEO of Rackspace Managed Hosting and founder of ServerBeach. Yoo has been in stealth mode with a Houston-area company called Hush Labs, whose first venture is a service called Natuba that links and profiles and activities across major social networking sites and aggregates it in a single interface. The service, which has been in beta since the spring, was featured this week in the Houston Chronicle.

There are a number of other efforts at building an effective aggregator for social network activity, including Spokeo, ProfileLinker and a rumored service from Google. Yoo sold his interest in Rackspace in 2005, and is targeting a niche that could be rewarding for the provider that nails the concept and execution properly.