Silicon Beach Startups Spawn From the Ashes of MySpace 44
McGruber writes "The NY Times reports how the alumni of distant also-ran social network Myspace have created an impressive number of spinoff internet companies. These companies have so significantly changed the Los Angeles area's tech scene that the area has been dubbed the 'Silicon Beach.' The article also provides details about the demise of Myspace under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. When YouTube launched in February 2005, many at Myspace wanted to introduce a similar feature. Travis Katz, who had joined Myspace as general manager of international business just after the acquisition, said he remembered telling News Corporation representatives that they would need to hire 40 developers immediately and 200 the next year. 'That was much faster than anything they were accustomed to,' Mr. Katz said. 'They said, "We're going to do a hiring freeze for six months and take a deep breath and determine then what we really need." But we couldn't wait six months. In six months, YouTube went from two million to 80 million users.'"
Re:Silicon Noun (Score:2, Interesting)
Silicon Beach ... just sounds redundant, unless your beach isn't made of sand...
Los Angeles, Doing What It Does Best (Publicity) (Score:5, Interesting)
As an engineer who lives practically next door to one of the hubs of so-called 'Silicon Beach', let me tell you that there is more publicity than business behind this concept. Don't get me wrong--there are legitimate reasons for considering the Los Angeles area a decent tech hub. A number of my favorite companies (Dreamhost! [dreamhost.com], and others) are located here, typically somewhere between the downtown area and Santa Monica. One of the biggest benefits is the thriving venture capital communities in the downtown and Pasadena areas, which is an understated-but-critical component to any truly substantial claim to 'Silicon [noun]'. (Strong venture capital communities also come with excellent startup support, commonly in some form of incubator [wikipedia.org].) You also get some great synergies between the educational institutions in the area (USC, UCLA, CalTech, Claremont colleges...), ongoing technology business efforts, and the parallel (not-as-mighty-as-it-once-was-but-still-substantial) aerospace community. We're fortunate to have a new (at least moderately) technically literate mayor [latimes.com], who's been pushing this 'Silicon Beach' idea quite a bit.
But that's the end of the good news. Here's why the TFA totally misses the mark, and (most likely unintentionally) buys into one of the latest political fads here in southern California.
First, the MySpace influence is strongly overrated. Businesses fail and shrink all the time, and--surprise--when they do, talented engineers will go off and do other things. The article paints a picture that implies that MySpace was this huge supergiant of a tech star, which went nova and whose subsequent remnants collected to spawn a whole new constellation of stars. In reality, MySpace was never really that big of a tech phenomenon or local influence. It's nowhere near as substantial as the unprecedented collapse of the southern California aerospace community [laedc.org] (a PDF--page 11 is most interesting) after the Cold War. If you don't want to click the link, here's a summary: southern California employed 271,700 aerospace jobs in 1990; that number dropped by 57% by 2000, and continues to plummet (88,4000 in 2011). It really makes MySpace look like a drop of piss in a thunderstorm.
Second, it's easy to underestimate the fact that southern California--even just 'Los Angeles'--is a really, really big place. The Silicon Valley is ~46km long (I'm measuring from San Mateo to downtown San Jose--the width, of course, is mere miles), and Wikipedia puts the population between 3.5 and 4 million. By comparison, Los Angeles county alone is 76km (Santa Clarita to Long Beach) by 74km (Santa Monica to Claremont), with a population of 10 million souls. Why is that relevant? It shouldn't be a surprise that, in a really big area, there are going to be a few winning tech companies. Few people can even agree what 'Silicon Beach' constitutes. Is it supposed to be Playa Vista, with the new Fox technical studios (a la MySpace), Electronic Arts offices, and a few new offices in newly-remodeled air hangers? It is sort of the west side in general, where Google has recently consolidated a new office [google.com] (in Venice Beach), and Activision-Blizzard is headquartered (Santa Monica)? Is it the general downtown vicinity, including North Hollywood and other light industrial areas, where established tech businesses have high-rise offices and new startups are renting out old movie studios for a steal of a rate? Is it the city of Los Angeles in general, with a new tech-friendly mayor, or the county, including tech-friendly Pasadena (CalTech and JPL, plus a lot of venture capital organizations)? Or does it also include Orange County, host of a whole slew of tech-sector ecosystems centered around U.C. Irvine (including the