At a MySpace party celebrating the opening of his San Francisco office, Rupert Murdoch left the SF Museum of Modern Art just before 11pm. Despite the late hour, the crowd was mostly geeks, with Brian Solis and some of the usual crowd present. Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, spoke about the opening of the event and his message to developers.
He promised that the focus on Facebook would change as it had taken up too much of our attention. The SoCal scene was pleasant, with few geeks in attendance.
Jason Calacanis suddenly appeared and asked if the speaker had seen Arrington. The spokesman denies having seen Arrington and quickly disappears. The Web 2.0/geek crowd is absent, which is refreshing. The cultures of MySpace and Facebook are different, with Facebook being a geek culture focused on developers, APIs and social graphs. MySpace is more SoCal, with a focus on sales and advertising, which may be alien to the Palo Alto/Silicon Valley tech community. However, it may not be so alien to the San Francisco/Silicon Valley tech community.
The interaction between MySpace and Silicon Valley will be interesting to watch. The cultures of the two organisations are also different, with Facebook being more developer and API focused, while MySpace is more SoCal and sales oriented.