Former Facebook Exec Van Natta Set to Take Over at MySpace, as Founder DeWolfe Prepares to Step Down
Finally, Owen Van Natta is about to win out over a founder. — The former Facebook COO (pictured here) is poised to become the CEO of MySpace, replacing co-founder and current CEO Chris DeWolfe.
Context & Ripple Effects
Owen Van Natta has been circling back toward a big chair since leaving Facebook's COO role in February 2008; he resurfaced in November 2008 as CEO of music startup Project Playlist — the very app MySpace disabled that December — before News Corp. began exploring MySpace CEO options earlier this week.
The timing matters because the job comes with a ticking clock: analysts reportedly give MySpace very low odds of renewing its Google search advertising contract anywhere close to the previous $900 million deal, and the company's own Events product has been playing catch-up with Facebook all spring even as it launched MySpace Local with Citysearch on March 31. The story drew same-day pickup from TechCrunch, Jason Calacanis' weblog and an official-sounding News Corporation item, though both the Van Natta appointment and DeWolfe's departure remain unconfirmed by the parties.
First-order effects
- Van Natta would swap a venture-backed startup for a struggling giant, inheriting immediate responsibility for the Google ad renegotiation and a product line (Events, Local) that has been rebuilt piecemeal rather than rethought.
- Chris DeWolfe's exit ends the founder-led structure News Corp. kept intact even through years of share loss to Facebook, leaving the co-founder's product lieutenants reporting to an outsider.
Second-order effects
- Hiring Facebook's former COO to run its chief rival turns executive talent into a competitive front: News Corp. is effectively importing the playbook of the company beating it, and other lagging networks will face the same pressure to recruit from the winner's bench.
- The Playlist connection cuts both ways — Van Natta ran the music service MySpace blocked in December 2008, so his arrival could reshape MySpace's adversarial stance toward independent music apps just as its core entertainment identity erodes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the first generation of social networks moves from founder control to professional operators hired from market leaders — a consolidation of management talent around whoever owns the social graph.
- A CEO change framed against an expiring $900 million search deal points toward ad economics becoming the forcing function for social network strategy, with content and community decisions subordinated to the next contract cycle.
The trend: Social networking is entering a phase where trailing platforms replace their founders with executives drawn from the dominant player, betting on imported playbooks over founding vision.