CEO’s departure expected to leave MySpace “rudderless”
MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta is leaving the company after less than a year in the role.
News Corporation, the social networking site’s parent company, said Van Natta’s resignation will be effective immediately.
Rumours suggest Van Natta is standing down due to differences with other top executives at MySpace, according to reports.
He will be replaced by current co-presidents Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, who will report in to Jon Miller, News Corp’s chairman and CEO of digital media.
All three executives joined the social media site in April 2009.
Miller said: “The business has shown very positive signs recently as a result of [Van Natta’s] dedicated work. However, in talking to Owen about his priorities both personally and professionally going forward, we both agreed that it was best for him to step down at this time.”
In a joint statement, Jones and Hirschhorn added: “This business is now pointed in the right direction, and we have a great team of employees that will continue to push MySpace closer to its potential as the place where people go to be discovered and to discover great content.”
However, it is thought that Van Natta’s exit could leave the company in further disarray. MySpace has been struggling in recent years due the growth and popularity of rival sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Last year, Facebook overtook MySpace in both the US and worldwide user counts.
Van Natta had tried to return MySpace to its former glory as a pioneering social media company when he joined last year, however, Facebook’s continued strength and the recession forced MySpace to slash 30% of its US staff last summer.
As such, analysts predict the loss of Van Natta will leave MySpace “rudderless”, at least for the short term.
Augie Ray, an analyst at Forrester Research, said it will be difficult for MySpace to move forwards without significant investment.
“It’s a little hard to see this as a good thing – for MySpace to have a president leave so quickly,” Ray said. “I think it would be very difficult for [MySpace] at this point to regain consumer adoption given the trends that are moving around them, particularly with Facebook and Twitter, and, depending on how it goes, Google Buzz.”
MySpace is said to be planning to reposition itself as more of an all-round music and entertainment portal to offer something different to its rival sites, however, Rob Enderle of Enderle Group suggested it might be easier for News Corp to sell MySpace rather than try and turn it around.