Next MySpace CEO: Owen Van Natta

Tuesday evening, MySpace acknowledged that Chris DeWolfe, the company’s cofounder and CEO, was leaving the organization.  Today, it looks like his replacement’s officially ready.  Folks familiar with the corporate side of social networks may recognize the name Owen Van Natta.

 Owen Van Natta

Van Natta served as Facebook’s chief operating officer and chief revenue officer for several years.  Before that, he spent even more time at Amazon.  Considering the amount of success those companies have encountered (admittedly, sometimes at MySpace’s expense), he should prove to be a real asset.

Van Natta’s likely to use his experience to make some big changes at MySpace.  It seems almost definite that DeWolfe was forced out, and so the new CEO will be expected to explore new directions.  He may become almost the social media equivalent of Carol Bartz, cutting projects, making layoffs, and generally keeping people on their toes.

One other big issue Van Natta will have to manage is a search deal with Google that’s set to expire in 2010.

Final confirmation of Van Natta’s installation is still lacking, so we can’t provide the standard PR quotes about how elated he is to join a terrific company, but the all of the formal stuff should be released later today.