MySpace (NWS) (NWSA) CEO Resigns

News Corporation (Nasdaq: NWS) (Nasdaq: NWSA) announced on Wednesday that the Chief Executive Officer of its MySpace subsidiary, Owen Van Natta, resigned from the position he held for less than a year.

Rival Facebook has been gaining market share and buzz at the expense of MySpace. Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) bought a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million in October 2007, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion at the time.

Van Natta is a former executive at privately held Facebook Inc. who was brought in to lead MySpace in April of 2009. Since his arrival, Facebook continued to grow at MySpace's expense.

According to News Corporation, Van Natta is being replaced by co-Presidents Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn.