MySpace Facelift, New CEO Owen Van Natta
MySpace’s “loss of face” to Facebook, a rough and tumble economy and a pivotal change of company seats, i.e., Peter Chernin, at News Corp (and MySpace’s own COO and senior technical team’s exodus) has contributed to a major executive facelift of MySpace. While their track record of change with Jeff Berman as President of Sales and Marketing and pitch towards being framed as a “social portal” has helped, the inability to keep up with Facebook’s growth rate and product innovation has forced change at MySpace. With the forthcoming announcement (today) by new CDO Jon Miller of former Facebook COO, Owen Van Natta, to the CEO spot, Fox and Murdoch are betting on social competitiveness to regain position. After the jump, we’ll look at Van Natta, and outside choice, Jason Calacanis’ recommendations. Read more >>
MySpace on the Bounty
No mutiny here actually, but we like the pun – today, MySpace’s COO and SVPs of Engineering + Product Strategy jumped off the boat. Noted as a “rising star,” 27-year-old Amit Kapur (MySpace’s COO) is leaving for a start-up after 13 months at the social network portal. In charge of global ops, it’s a fresh turn for Kapur; and a dynamic story of an acquired start-up supporting player turning into a new, untethered, start-up featured role. Think Googler turned Xoogler metaphor. Read more >>