Former Facebook Exec Named MySpace CEO

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 24, 2009 7:26 AM CDT
Former Facebook Exec Named MySpace CEO
Owen Van Natta, in a screen grab from YouTube   (YouTube)

News Corp. has hired former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta to run MySpace, the Wall Street Journal reports. The expected move may be announced as early as today. The hiring comes fast for MySpace, which announced Wednesday that current CEO Chris DeWolfe was stepping down, along with fellow co-founder Tom Anderson as president.

Van Natta joined Facebook in 2005, when it was still open only to college students. He was instrumental in opening it to the public and securing an investment from Microsoft. He left the company in 2008 to become CEO of the Project Playlist music streaming site. Though MySpace still has more US visitors than Facebook, that gap is closing, and Facebook has more users globally.   (More MySpace stories.)

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