Owen Van Natta

Owen T. Van Natta (born November 12, 1969)^[1] is formerly the Executive Vice President of Business at Zynga, an internet company that makes online social games.^[2] He is responsible for the company’s revenue strategy, corporate development, international expansion and brand. Prior to officially joining Zynga, he consulted for the company across a number of critical business functions.^[3] He is also a member of the Zynga Board of Directors. He resigned from Zynga on November 17, 2011.

Background

Van Natta has held notable positions in various media companies, including Amazon.com, Facebook, Project Playlist and Myspace.^[4] Van Natta holds a bachelor's degree in English from the University of California, Santa Cruz.^[5]

Career

From June 1998 to August 2005, Van Natta was Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon.com, where he managed global marketing programs and strategic partnerships. He was part of the founding team of A9.com, the Amazon.com search company, and was responsible for site operations and sponsored-link advertising.^[6]

Van Natta became the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, where he focused on revenue operations, business development, and strategic partnerships from September 2005 to February 2008.^[7] At the time of his departure, his title was Chief Revenue Officer.^[8] He went on to serve as the Chief Executive Officer of Project Playlist in 2008, a music sharing website allowing users to search for music, create custom playlists, and share the content with friends.^[9]

In April 2009, Van Natta became Chief Executive Officer of MySpace, where he was responsible for all aspects of the company’s strategic vision and the execution of its global business initiatives.^[10] Van Natta created new features as a part of his refocusing of strategy, and tried to move MySpace from a social networking platform to an entertainment content distribution platform.^[11] By the end of 2009, NewsCorp's Fox Interactive Media business posted revenue of $226 million and profits of $7 million, the vast majority of it from MySpace.^[12] After spending ten months in his position, he stepped down and joined Zynga in February 2010.

Zynga

Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron, Andrew Trader, and Steve Schoettler. It is a network of gaming applications found on social networks, including Facebook and Bebo. Zynga boasts more than 225 million^[13] monthly active users across its network of games which include FarmVille, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Zynga Poker, Café World, Treasure Isle, YoVille, FishVille, and PetVille. In addition to making their own games, Zynga has created a network which allows third party developers to become part of the Zynga network. Zynga claims to be the largest social game network on the web.^[14]

References