After more than four years at the helm of the popular social network, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is stepping down before his contract expires. He is one of the creators of MySpace and has been the CEO since February 2005.
The company said the decision to step down in the “near future” was a mutual one between DeWolfe and News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller. News Corp. owns MySpace.
“It’s been one of the best experiences of my life and we’re proud of, and grateful to, the team of talented people who helped us along the way,” DeWolfe said. “We thank them as well as the MySpace community for making our vision a reality.”
Observers believe the move may have been triggered by tougher competition from rival Facebook, which in the past year has added hundreds of thousands of users and tapped a larger demographic.
While DeWolfe will no longer handle day-to-day operations of the company, he will still serve on the board of MySpace China and will remain an adviser to the company.
DeWolfe, along with cocreator Tom Anderson, who serves as president, grew MySpace from a small startup with seven employees to a profitable company with 1,600 employees and one of the most visited Web sites on the Internet.
Anderson is expected to take a “new role” within the organization, but it’s not clear if he will fill his partner’s shoes.
Another contender is former Facebook CFO Owen Van Natta, a source told the Los Angeles Times.
Social-networking sites have seen an increase in visitors, claiming 6.13 percent of U.S. Internet traffic in 2008, up four percent year over year, according to tracking company Hitwise.
MySpace, which dominated the social-networking scene for the past few years, got more competition from Facebook in the past year. In February…