Owen Van Natta is back in the game. He’s back in business. And he’s back in the games business. Zynga, the maker of FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and other popular Facebook games, is hiring the social-networking veteran as executive vice president of business operations. Van Natta, who’d been consulting for the company, starts work on Monday, and is also joining Zynga’s board of directors.
It’s the latest in a string of high-profile hires and business deals for Zynga, which is widely believed to be gearing up for an IPO.
Van Natta most recently ran MySpace, but was ousted from his job as CEO in February amid a high-profile conflict with Jonathan Miller, the chief digital officer at MySpace’s parent company, News Corp. Before that he briefly ran Project Playlist, a now-defunct music startup based in Palo Alto. He’s best known for his role as chief operating officer of Facebook, where he was known for his aggressive dealmaking, a career capped by Microsoft’s investment in the social network at a breathtaking valuation of $15 billion.
Continue Reading at VentureBeat
