Did Rupert Murdoch wait way too long to fix MySpace? It’s easy to get that impression from the News Corp. earnings call today.
The takeaway: The site is losing traffic and money and is going to get at least $100 million less from Google than it once thought. “It’s a work in progress,” News Corp. says, over and over again.
Employees at News Corp.’s MySpace have been waiting to find out who their new ad sales boss will be. And, here she is: Nada Stirratt, who until today was running digital sales for Viacom’s MTV Networks.
Stirratt has her work cut out for her. The struggling social networking site, HQed in Beverly Hills, has been trying to reboot its image, spur innovation in its product and, most of all, pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, has seen explosive growth.
As Kara Swisher just reported, News Corp.’s MySpace has hired media consulting firm Media Link, along with Media Link President Wenda Harris Millard, to overhaul the social network’s sales group.
Here’s the complete internal memo from CEO Owen Van Natta, which describes Millard’s position as head of the ad sales group as an “interim” one, and announces that former sales boss Jeff Berman is out.
Now that MySpace has finished its acquisition of iLike, what is it going to do with it? Don’t think music, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta stressed in a press conference today, think about “socialization of content.”
What does that mean? It means the social network has spent $19.5 million on engineering talent to help overhaul its site.
The music industry’s online forays have always inspired head-scratching, but this one is odd even by those standards: Project Playlist, the online music service currently being sued by Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, is bolstering its tech staff by buying the assets of… a music service owned by Universal Music Group. But the lawsuits have yet to be resolved. Confusing? Of course.
As All Things Digital reported earlier today, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is stepping down from his post, but will stay on board as a “strategic advisor” to the company. MySpace owner News Corp. didn’t name a successor to DeWolfe, but we believe the company is close to bringing Owen Van Natta, the former COO at Facebook and current CEO of Project Playlist, in as a replacement. News Corp. also said that it is in talks to move aside Tom Anderson, DeWolfe’s longtime partner, from his position as president.
MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is likely to be on his way out of the company he helped found, and News Corp., which bought the social network in 2005, has a single potential successor in mind. Sources say that person is former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta, who is currently CEO of music start-up Project Playlist. People familiar with the matter tell me that DeWolfe and News Corp., specifically new digital boss Jon Miller, are discussing a leadership change today.
EMI Music Group, which sued Web music start-up Project Playlist nearly a year ago, has dropped its suit and will start providing its catalog to the site, which offers free streaming music. The settlement, in conjunction with an earlier deal struck with Sony’s Sony Music Entertainment, means that Project Playlist now has deals with two of the big four music labels. But Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group are still suing the company.
Four days after MySpace cut the legs out from under Project Playlist by disabling the music streaming service’s app, Facebook is following suit.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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