Velocity

D7 Interview: Jon Miller and Owen Van Natta Say MySpace Needs to Innovate

Peter Kafka in D7 on May 27, 2009 at 4:49 pm PT

A couple of years ago, MySpace was the hottest thing on the Web. But that was a couple of years ago. Now the social network has gone cold: It is losing audience to Facebook and other sites and may well lose a very lucrative search deal with Google. Fixing MySpace is the chief priority of Jon Miller, the former AOL boss who was brought on as News Corp.’s chief digital officer in March. About a month after that, Miller brought on former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta and a new management team to run MySpace, displacing the site’s founders. Time for Van Natta to tell us just how he intends to save what was once one of the most important sites on the Web. And time for Miller to explain the digital future for the rest of News Corp.–which happens to own this conference.

Carl Icahn's CEO Search

Kara Swisher in News on July 9, 2008 at 10:04 am PT

Here’s a way Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang can needle activist investor Carl Icahn, using an famous old ad tag line: Where’s the beef? Specifically, who’s going to mind the store if Icahn actually manages to win his proxy fight against Yahoo’s board and makes good on his promise to fire Yang? Because if there is one thing that is hurting Icahn’s chances, it is the worry among major Yahoo investors that he simply cannot run Yahoo, even for a short time. So, of course, he is out beating the bushes for a suitable CEO.