Van Natta

News that Owen Van Natta is stepping down as CEO of MySpace after just 10 months on the job could have implications in the Seattle tech community. It was announced this afternoon that Van Natta -- a former Amazon.com and Facebook executive -- would be replaced by two newly-named co-presidents: Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn.

As you may recall, one of Van Natta's key moves during his short tenure was purchasing Seattle-based online music startup iLike for a song. iLike's top executives -- twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi -- joined MySpace as part of the deal. And that bolstered MySpace's staffing in the Seattle area to 70 employees.

Shortly after the acquisition, Van Natta promoted the Partovis. It appeared -- at least on the surface -- that they had good working relationships.

At the time, Van Natta wrote in a blog post:

"Hadi will bolster our Seattle-based development team, unify the MySpace and iLike teams under one roof, and grow the Seattle-based team behind some of our most popular products like Mail and IM. The iLike acquisition is now officially closed so this week we’re celebrating Ali and Hadi’s new MySpace roles as well as the future of great synergies between the MySpace and iLike teams."

Will those synergies continue under the new management? Were the Partovis in the Van Natta camp or the new management team's camp?

Those are questions that will be interesting to ponder here in the coming days. I've got an email into the Partovis and will update this post if I hear anything.

Hirschorn is a former MTV and Sling Media executive, while Jones previously founded Userplane and Tsavo Media. They issued a joint statement today as part of the press release that read:

“We joined MySpace last April with very a specific set of goals in mind, and are anxious to continue working together to make those goals a reality. This business is now pointed in the right direction, and we have a great team of employees that will continue to push MySpace closer to its potential as the place where people go to be discovered and to discover great content.”

Full release here.