MySpace CEO Quits As Facebook Has 10x Daily Reach

Owen Van Natta, the CEO of MySpace since April 2009, is on his way out. Owen was hired from rival Facebook where he served as Chief Operating Officer.

In a statement, MySpace said Mr Natta will be replaced a by two people, Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn.

This is probably the best thing that could happen for MySpace. Perhaps because I’m getting old as the hills now, but everyone I know has already migrated away from MySpace to Facebook.

The following graph show’s the social network’s overall reach has dropped from 8% to just above 3% over the past 18 months (no end in sight for the decline):

Are other top executives going to run for the doors as the ship sinks? Will a new leadership team get MySpace back on course? The near future will tell.

Here’s Facebook’s reach graph showing 30% (10x more traffic than MySpace now):

Google Right Side Sponsored Link Thumbnail Images

Today is the first time I noticed thumbnail images in the right side sponsored ads in google search results. Perhaps Google is taking some lessons away from Facebook’s success using the thumbnail + text for sidebar ad delivery.

Check out this example (click for fullsize)

Notice how many of the links on Google’s search results are now sponsored? They have taken 80% of the first page results for themselves.

BING should have an easier time growing market share if Google can annoy their surfers enough with the sponsored listings.

ReachLocal Expects More Financial Losses

In December, ReachLocal filed for a $100M IPO and released a few interesting numbers about their operations.

The company has a $6.1M debt obligation after acquiring the remaining shares of it’s Australia operations (in Sept ReachLocal bought the remaining 53% of shares it did not own). Somehow after this deal was completed ReachLocal reported a “non cash” gain of $16.2M on the transaction, but that the operations had already ran a deficit of $3.3M.

If you back out the one time non-cash gain and operating losses from the Australian acquisition, ReachLocal lost about $500,000/mo over the last 9 months on $143.3 million in revenue. In a pre-IPO regulatory filing, the company stated it “expects to report net operating losses in the foreseeable future”.

It was shocking to read about how much ReachLocal employees dislike their own company. This JobVent Poll shows reach scored at 14.5 out of 100 employer rating. Unhappy customers are likely to follow this trend.