Hot on the heels of its appointment of a chief technology officer last week, News Corp.'s MySpace on Monday announced that Mark Rosenbaum has been hired as its chief financial officer.
Although the appointment marks the first time that the social network has had a CFO, it is Rosenbaum's second stint at News Corp. He headed up financial operations at Gemstar-TV Guide International, when it was owned by the Rupert Murdoch-helmed conglomerate. More recently, Rosenbaum served as a consultant to MGM.
Mark Rosenbaum's MySpace profile picture.
(Credit: MySpace)In his new position, Rosenbaum report directly to Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook executive who became MySpace's CEO in April, after the departure of co-founder Chris DeWolfe.
Less than two months after Van Natta's hiring, MySpace announced a layoff of nearly 30 percent amid stagnant growth and what was increasingly a losing battle against Facebook in its quest for social-networking dominance. The company called its aim at financial efficiency a "return to start-up culture."
Hiring a chief financial officer is, as a result, a logical step.
"Having led companies at every stage of their development, Mark understands both start-up culture and mature businesses, and is well-suited to guide MySpace's financial organization through its next phase of growth," Van Natta said in a release announcing Rosenbaum's hire. "We're thrilled to add someone with his pedigree and experience to the team."
MySpace has appointed Alex Maghen to the role of chief technology officer, the News Corp.-owned social site announced Tuesday. He replaces outgoing CTO Aber Whitcomb, who had been at the company since its inception.
Maghen was already at MySpace, serving in the CTO position of its MySpace Music division, a joint venture with the major record labels. Prior to that, he held CTO roles at Yahoo Entertainment and MTV Networks--the latter of which was also the former employer of current MySpace entertainment execs Courtney Holt and Jason Hirschhorn.
"The next phase of MySpace's evolution will further empower our incredible audience of consumers, developers, artists, content creators, and advertisers with the tools they need to broadcast, discover, and express themselves," Maghen said in a release. "The future of our technology organization will be guided by an open platform and world-class standards to create a place of invention for our technical staff as well as the world's development community."
MySpace has fallen out of the tech industry's favor, surpassed both in traffic and technological innovation by once-smaller rival Facebook--even though MySpace advocated developer-friendly open standards well before Facebook came out in full support of them.
There have been some promising signs of late on the technology front: a MySpace-Twitter status sync proved popular enough to make MySpace's URL shortener the second most popular on the microblogging service.
Facebook has named former Genentech executive David Ebersman to the office of chief financial officer. He replaces Gideon Yu, whose departure was announced at the end of March.
"We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech's CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook."
David Ebersman earned a bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1991, according a university Web page.
(Credit: Brown University)Ebersman served as chief financial officer at the San Francisco-area biotechnology company Genentech from 2006 through April 2009 after moving up the ranks in the company for about a decade. The company was sold to Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Hoffmann-LaRoche in March, shortly before Ebersman stepped down.
He will officially start at Facebook in September.
Gideon Yu's departure from Facebook came amid rumors that he had failed to secure enough venture capital to keep the advertising-based company pushing forward toward profitability, something that Facebook repeatedly denied. The company said its search for a new CFO would focus primarily on "someone with public company experience." Ebersman wasn't at Genentech when it went public in 1980, but certainly did have experience running the financial operations of a public company--as well as its sale to a bigger corporation.
Two months after Yu departed Facebook, the social-networking company announced that it had received an additional infusion of venture capital, to the tune of $200 million, from Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies.
This post was updated at 12:01 p.m. PDT.
Not a particularly surprising move: LinkedIn president Jeff Weiner has taken over as CEO of the company, according to an announcement Wednesday from the business networking site.
Weiner, a former executive vice president at Yahoo, joined the company in January after then-CEO Dan Nye stepped down in December and founder Reid Hoffman took over as interim CEO. Hoffman will remain executive chairman of the company.
"LinkedIn was founded to harness the power of the Internet to create a tool that would help individuals become more effective and successful professionals," Hoffman said in a release. "Over the past six months, Jeff has done an exceptional job leading the company and I look forward to continuing the work that we have begun together."
LinkedIn now has over 42 million members, the company said, and hopes to be profitable this year for the second year in a row; it makes money not only from ads, but from premium subscriptions and "corporate solutions."
The company was aiming for a billion-dollar valuation just around a year ago when it raised a $53 million Series D funding round. Hoffman has gone on the record saying that he hopes LinkedIn will eventually go public.
Two new members have been added to the fresh lineup of MySpace's executive ranks, following the appointment of CEO Owen Van Natta last week.
Jason Hirschhorn, most recently president of Sling Media Entertainment and before that MTV Networks' chief digital officer, joins MySpace as its chief product officer. He's the second prominent MTV veteran to take on a role at the News Corp.-owned MySpace in the past year, following MySpace Music president Courtney Holt.
Hirschhorn is firmly on the digital-media and entertainment side of things, something that will invariably come into play as MySpace (ideally) restructures itself as an entertainment destination rather than a networking tool. At Sling, he was charged with the development of the SlingPlayer online video aggregator.
The other new MySpace hire comes from a more traditional Silicon Valley background: Michael Jones, who sold his start-up Userplane to AOL in 2006, joins the company as chief operating officer. MySpace is already familiar with Jones' work: it uses Userplane's chat technology for its Web-based chat client, MySpaceIM.
Both will be based in Los Angeles and report directly to Van Natta.
It's official: News Corp. has named former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta as MySpace's CEO, following reports on Thursday that an announcement was imminent. Van Natta's appointment is "effective immediately," a release from MySpace said.
Van Natta succeeds Chris DeWolfe, who stepped down from the post earlier this week, reportedly at the request of newly appointed News Corp. digital czar Jonathan Miller. DeWolfe will remain on the company's board.
Owen Van Natta
(Credit: Facebook, via All Things Digital)"I'm thrilled to have the privilege to pilot MySpace in what is sure to be an incredibly exciting and rewarding next chapter for the business," Van Natta said in a statement. "I feel honored to build upon the immeasurable achievements of the MySpace founders and look forward to working with Jon and the MySpace team to meet the challenges and make the most of the opportunities before us."
Van Natta served as chief operating officer of Facebook before he was shifted--some would say demoted--to the position of chief revenue officer and vice president of operations. He left in February 2008 and later took the CEO position at social music start-up Playlist.
John Sykes, a Playlist board member and one of the original MTV co-founders, will take over Van Natta's CEO role there. Van Natta will continue to be an adviser to the start-up--which is interesting, since it technically competes with the MySpace Music service.
"Owen combines a deep understanding of social networking, a keen business sense, and the operational experience to guide MySpace through its next phase of growth. I'm confident his leadership will be an invaluable asset," Miller said in a statement. "I plan to work closely with Owen to shape our long-term vision around this vibrant community that already attracts more than 130 million users worldwide."
Facebook, Van Natta's old employer, has eclipsed MySpace in worldwide traffic with now more than 200 million active users.
Van Natta's a proven dealmaker. During his tenure as chief revenue officer, Facebook chalked up that whopping $240 million investment from Microsoft. But here's where he might be lacking: entertainment industry cred. With a background at Amazon, Facebook, and several tech start-ups, Van Natta--who will be based in Los Angeles at MySpace's headquarters--probably isn't on the Hollywood circuit. MySpace needs those entertainment connections, some of which come naturally with its News Corp. ownership, because it has a much sunnier future as a pop-culture hub than a social-networking tool.
That said, it's a good first sign that under Van Natta's watch, Playlist started inking deals with major record labels in order to stave off its legal troubles.
This post was expanded at 10:35 a.m. PT.
Considering that AllThingsD's Kara Swisher has a very good track record of knowing Van Natta's whereabouts, we're going to take this one as solid. The announcement could come as early as Friday, Swisher wrote, and though there's no word on timing, we're guessing that it'll either be after the market closes or possibly held off until Monday.
Owen Van Natta
Van Natta rose to the tech world's upper ranks as chief operating officer of Facebook, a position he took after a stint at Amazon.com. He left just more than a year ago, either because of internal disputes with CEO Mark Zuckerberg or because he saw no chance that he'd earn the top spot himself anytime soon (or both). He was then reportedly in the running for the head job at MySpace's new music service and apparently withdrew his candidacy.
Right now, he's the CEO of Project Playlist, one of the many "social music" start-ups that is technically a competitor to MySpace Music, and he has been inking deals with record labels to keep away its persistent legal problems.
DeWolfe's departure from MySpace was announced earlier this week as part of a management shake-up that was likely initiated by Jonathan Miller, the new digital boss at MySpace parent company News Corp. There will likely be other departures and new executives, but AllThingsD said they won't be announced quite yet.
Van Natta probably wasn't the only candidate under consideration: there were hints that News Corp. was also looking internally, possibly at sales and marketing executive Jeff Berman.
Either way, MySpace is in need of some fresh ideas, as it continues to slide into second place behind Facebook.
Facebook chief financial officer Gideon Yu is leaving the company, representatives from the social network confirmed Tuesday.
"Facebook confirms that CFO Gideon Yu will be leaving the company," a statement from Facebook read. "Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company. We are grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish."
But there's more: It looks like the reason for Yu's departure is because Facebook still hopes to be on track to file for an initial public offering.
"Despite the poor economic climate, we are pleased that our financial performance is strong and we are well positioned for the next stage of our growth," the statement from Facebook continued. "We have retained (search firm) Spencer Stuart to lead our search for a new CFO and will be looking for someone with public company experience."
The report was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.
Yu, a former Google employee who was brought on board there when it acquired YouTube, had been hired fewer than two years ago, and the Journal reported that Facebook is currently hunting for a replacement who has experience running a public company. Prior to YouTube, Yu had been employed as "treasurer" at Yahoo. He also has side projects, joining the team of high-profile investors--including the new Google Ventures--in e-commerce start-up Pixazza.
Yu was one of the first in a string of prominent Googlers to join Facebook's upper ranks as it rose to the top of Silicon Valley's pecking order. Eventually, sales chief Sheryl Sandberg joined the company as chief operating officer, and public affairs czar Elliot Schrage was hired as head of global communications.
So now it looks like Facebook's plan is to push for an IPO. With Yu at the helm of its finances, rumors had swirled for months that it was looking to raise additional venture capital funding to fuel its exponential growth. The company will likely hit 200 million members worldwide within days, a mass that requires costly hardware and personnel around the globe. Persistent reports hinted that not only was Yu attempting to drum up interest in more funding, but that he was having a tough time doing so.
Facebook's valuation was hit hard by the recession, with private stock trading dipping to lower and lower values and Forbes magazine speculating that founder Mark Zuckerberg had lost his status as a paper billionaire as a result.
In November 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation. These days, Facebook is lucky if its valuation is a third of that. But it eventually became evident that the $15 billion was never a reality: Microsoft's stake was in preferred stock, and the $15 billion was a term of the deal.
Going public is a risky move for any company in a recession, particularly one that is still on the road to profitability but not there yet. But for Facebook, with the quest for more venture funding growing increasingly fruitless, it may be the best road out.
Three executives from social network MySpace, including Chief Operating Officer Amit Kapur, are departing the News Corp.-owned company to create a new venture.
The two execs leaving with Kapur are Jim Benedetto, senior vice president of engineering, and Steve Pearman, senior vice president of product strategy.
"We're incredibly excited to see what this team creates together and wish them the best of luck as they transition from helping run a company to building a new one," a statement from MySpace read. "Amit, Jim, and Steve depart as great friends of MySpace and of our executive team. They will remain on board for the next few weeks to ensure a smooth transition company-wide."
A company-wide memo from CEO Chris DeWolfe accentuated the health of MySpace, which has lost significant ground to rival Facebook in the past year. Facebook is now the industry leader worldwide, and while MySpace remains the U.S. leader in social networking, Facebook is expected to surpass it within a year or two. The memo highlighted recent initiatives from the five-year-old service like streaming music service MySpace Music, a redesign last year, and the HyperTargeting ad program.
MySpace has gone through a number of executive shakeups over the past year, including a big one late last July that saw five new executive hires at the same time as a number of departures.
The company would not comment on replacements for the three departing executives, and said that Kapur had not yet disclosed the nature of his new project.
Greg Coleman, a longtime Yahoo executive, has been named the new president of AOL's advertising division, Platform-A.
Greg Coleman
(Credit: AOL)"Greg Coleman is the perfect person to build on the foundation we created at Platform-A and drive branded display sales across our fast-growing MediaGlow programming network," AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco said in a release, referring to the network of blogs and media properties that the online conglomerate formally packaged and announced last month. "Greg's a seasoned sales pro who understands that online brand building is the next frontier in digital advertising, and that whoever can deliver marketers measurably improved branding online will be positioned for long-term success."
Coleman, who will report to AOL chief operating officer Ron Grant, left Yahoo early last year amid a management shuffle and became president and CEO of ad targeting start-up NetSeer. Around the time of his departure, AOL itself went through a shakeup in which Platform-A president Curt Viebranz left the company. Viebranz was replaced by Lynda Clazirio, who was president of AOL acquisition Advertising.com.
CNET News asked a representative from AOL, which relocated its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Va., to New York in 2007 to position itself close to the advertising and media industries, whether Clazirio would remain at the company. The e-mailed response was, "Lynda hasn't yet announced what she's planning to do next."
