Three top execs have reportedly left MySpace - COO Amit Kapur, Senior VP Of Technology Jim Benedetto and Senior VP Of Product Strategy Steve Pearman. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe reportedly confirmed the departures in an internal memo, and encouraged staff there to make an effort to get to know the company's more recently appointed senior execs.
The memo apparently goes like this: " Tom and I want to reiterate how passionate we are about MySpace - we love the people, the product, and we believe in the future of the company. I encourage everyone to get to know our executive team as they are an enormously capable group of professionals from successful media and internet powerhouses such as eBay, Yahoo!, MTV, and Symantec that will lead our company into its next phase".
The reason for three senior execs departing in one go isn't clear, though it's possible one of them actually tried to use their website one day and realised just how frustratingly rubbish it is, despite its popularity.
Joking aside, rumour has it that some senior technical types at MySpace are increasingly frustrated at the general shoddiness of their website, which has come about because such a big network has been built on the company's original social networking framework, which was never great. The inadequacies are all the more obvious because many of MySpace's competitors in the social networking domain operate much better platforms.
Insiders say that those frustrations, coupled with Kapur et al's departure, are having a serious effect on morale of the Rupert Murdoch owned social networking company - and the somewhat lacklustre response to the US launch of the revamped MySpace Music, which the social networking company had previously been touting as big big news in the world of digital music, hasn't helped. The fact DeWolfe felt the need to reaffirm his own commitment to the company seems to back up those rumours.
Still, while Facebook and increasingly Twitter dominate in the world of true social networking, it has to be said MySpace does still lead when it comes to band-fan networking so, while the new look MySpace Music may itself have been a bit disappointing, there is still surely some potential for MySpace to take a good slice of the digital music pie longterm.