MySpace chief executive Owen Van Natta abruptly stepped down on Wednesday night, News Corp said, in another setback for its beleaguered social networking arm.
Two executives, Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, will become co-presidents of MySpace, reporting to News Corp chairman of digital media Jonathan Miller. The moves are effective immediately.
Currently, Jones is the chief operating officer and Hirschhorn is the chief product officer of MySpace.
“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,” Miller said in a statement.
He called Van Natta’s challenge in revitalizing MySpace “incredible” and said the business “has shown very positive signs recently as a result of his dedicated work.”
Van Natta joined MySpace just 10 months ago from Project Playlist, an online music venture. Two months later, the company cut its workforce by nearly one third.
Van Natta said at the time that he wanted MySpace to “return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.”
Previously, he worked at Facebook as its chief revenue officer.
Once the behemoth of the social networking set, MySpace’s size and ambitions have shrunk in recent years.
While MySpace remains a popular source of entertainment, its audience has eroded as Internet users flock to competing social networking sites, especially Facebook. At the end of 2008, MySpace accounted for about 64 percent of visits to major social networking sites, according to the measurement firm comScore, while Facebook accounted for about 29 percent.
By the end of last year, their positions had reversed, with Facebook attracting 68 percent of the traffic and MySpace earning just 28 percent.
“MySpace is not where we want it,” News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch told analysts this month.
Murdoch said that MySpace’s traffic had started to stabilize, and that the new management team, including Van Natta, had repositioned the Web site as “the prime place where people share thoughts and ideas about music, entertainment and other popular content.”
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)