The News Corporation, the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, has named Owen Van Natta, a former Facebook executive, to become chief executive of MySpace.

Mr. Van Natta’s appointment on Friday followed by two days the departure of Chris DeWolfe, a co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, in a management shake-up. Mr. Van Natta, 39, was previously chief revenue officer of Facebook. Most recently he was chief executive of Playlist, an online music venture. He has also worked at Amazon.com

While working at Facebook, Mr. Van Natta helped negotiate a $240 million investment from Microsoft.

In 2005, the News Corporation bought MySpace for $580 million, and Mr. Murdoch was immediately credited with making a bold acquisition to take his company into the digital age. But in recent years MySpace has lost considerable stature to Facebook in the minds of consumers.

[ Source NYTimes ]