If anyone could revive MySpace, apparently it wasn't former Facebook Inc. executive Owen Van Natta. He exited as CEO of News Corp.'s (NASDAQ:NWS) struggling social network late Wednesday, Feb. 10, after just nine months. His departure is the latest sign of the struggles at News Corp.'s Digital Media Group, which the company says drives digital strategy company-wide and directs the standalone digital media businesses.

When Van Natta replaced MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe as CEO of MySpace last April, the hope was he would lead a much-needed modernization of the social network that had begun losing mindshare and marketshare to Facebook even before News Corp. paid $580 million for it in 2005.

Under Van Natta, MySpace tried to bolster its reputation as the social network for music lovers and up its hip factor by buying online music recommendation service iLike Inc. and music-related social network Imeem. The moves did little to slow the momentum enjoyed by the competition, with Facebook last year surpassing MySpace as the world's largest social network and with Twitter Inc. becoming the social networking choice for celebrities from Oprah to Bill Gates.

Worse yet, MySpace missed traffic targets on its $900 million search deal with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), receiving $100 million less in payments than expected.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch in an earnings call this week said that the turnaround at MySpace was taking longer than he thought it would and was "disappointing."

Van Natta will be succeeded by two lieutenants, Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, who have been named co-presidents. Jones, formerly the founder of Userplane, and Hirschhorn, former president of Sling Media Inc., were hired by News Corp. digital head Jon Miller, who also hired Van Natta. Reportedly, Van Natta was frustrated that he hadn't been able to pick his own team and wanted to oust Hirschhorn, but Miller wouldn't acquiesce.

Whatever the drama at the digital group, there may be more fundamental questions about News Corp.'s online strategy. During the earnings call Murdoch spoke enthusiastically about Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad as the next frontier, but mainly as a channel for content such as the Wall Street Journal provides, which News Corp. also owns.

In the quarterly earnings release, meanwhile, the company noted that it had taken a combined loss of $29 million on a couple of divestitures by the digital group: the sale of Photobucket to Ontela in December and Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster in January. Could these be just the beginning of a broader digital sell-off?