New MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta starts his first day on the job at MySpace bright and early this morning, coming to its Beverly Hills HQ as he takes over for co-founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe.

Along with him will also be a new COO, former AOL exec Mike Jones, whose appointment will be announced this morning, sources said.

Jones was the founder of Userplane, a social-networking application maker that was bought by then-AOL head Jon Miller in 2006. Miller is now the digital chief at News Corp., which owns MySpace.

With a strong product and technology background, Jones is an excellent choice to be a partner to Van Natta–who was hired by Miller last week in a flurry of change at the social-networking site.

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Former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta has finally been officially named as CEO of MySpace, as BoomTown reported yesterday and News Corp. announced this morning.

He will replace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe, who stepped down from the job earlier this week. DeWolfe will remain a strategic adviser at MySpace.

Here’s the full press release.

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Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will be named CEO of MySpace as early as tomorrow said sources close to the situation.

He will replace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe, who stepped down from the job yesterday. DeWolfe will remain a strategic adviser at MySpace.

No other top execs at the huge social-networking site will be named yet, as some have reported.

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Finally, Owen Van Natta is about to win out over a founder.

The former Facebook COO is poised to become the CEO of MySpace, replacing co-founder and current CEO Chris DeWolfe.

DeWolfe will likely get a title as a special adviser to MySpace in a deal that is still coming together.

But the die seems cast for Van Natta to take over the thorny job of rehauling MySpace, which is owned by News Corp.

It’s familiar territory for him.

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Another Goog-Bye.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, president of Google’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations, is leaving the company and joining Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners as a CEO-in-residence.

Cassidy, 39, is one of the search giant’s more visible execs and one of its higher-ranking women leaders and also the second top Google exec to depart the company recently.

While exec exodus from Google is much noticed, the moves are probably not surprising given that the powerful company–as it matures–has limited avenues for its typically ambitious managers.

“I was at the end of my streak [at Google] and ready to take the next step and run or grow my own company,” Cassidy said in an interview with BoomTown late tonight. “It is key for me to be stepping out and spreading my wings now.”

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Last week, the economy took a much needed breather from its toilet-circling behavior of late, with the stock market showing gains for several days running.

Who knows what today will bring, given all the volatility, but most of the big consumer-focused digital companies saw solid upticks over the last five days.

You could also feel the revelry at the South by Southwest gathering that started this weekend in Austin, Texas, with lots of Web 2.0 partying and discussions of a Twitterific-Facebooktastic future.

Maybe happy days are here again? Um, nope.

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Last night, well-known Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen appeared on the “Charlie Rose” interview show, talking about the digital sector and unveiling the news that he is creating a new venture fund.

I had heard rumblings about Andreessen’s funding efforts earlier this week, with sources I talked to jokingly nicknaming it “Project A.”

Actually, Andreessen said the new firm is called Andreessen Horowitz (zzzz), because he is doing it with longtime investing partner Ben Horowitz.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen.

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Many years ago in the midst of the Web 1.0 boom, when working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, BoomTown redubbed an annual dinner that book agent John Brockman threw at the TED conference.

It was jokingly called the “Millionaires’ Dinner,” but I renamed it the “Billionaires’ Dinner.”

That was due to the frothy fortunes that had been made at the time by the Internet pioneers, from Amazon to AOL to eBay. Get it?!?

Well, despite the economic meltdown, there were still a lot of billionaires in attendance at Brockman’s most recent dinner last Thursday in Long Beach. But he recounted to me that the proceedings were a lot more focused on the serious times we are in, as was the whole digerati-packed conference held last week.

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Today, most companies in the tech and Internet sector will close the books on what is likely to be a very disappointing fourth quarter and also close out what has turned out to be a mucho depressing year, which got hammered starting in the third.

While financial results will not out for some weeks, one does not have to be a psychic to know what’s coming: A lot of weakness, with hopes for better days ahead.

It’s a far cry from how 2008 started out, with high valuations for all. Those were the days my friend, Silicon Valley thought they’d never end, to sing and dance forever and a day. As it turned out, it was more of a swan song for Web 2.0.

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After the Senate effort to forge a package to help the ailing U.S. auto industry collapsed yesterday, one can expect that the stock market will give up gains made in recent days. And, inevitably, that will include for the tech industry, whose shares have rallied this past week. In other words, Silicon Valley is still not immune.

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BoomTown just got to Paris, as in France, to attend and moderate sessions for the third annual Le Web conference. Le Web is organized by Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur, with 1,500 people signed up to hear a range of Internet players, many of whom are from the U.S., tomorrow and Wednesday. Silicon Valley speakers include Marissa Mayer of Google, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Dan’l Lewin of Microsoft. And some interesting European execs include France Telecom Orange Chairman and CEO Didier Lombard and Jacques-Antoine Granjon, CEO and co-founder of a very interesting fashion sale site, Vente-Privee.com.

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About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?

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Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist, and Pittman will join its board.

The site, which has been called Project Playlist, had previously raised several million dollars. The new round of funding super-sized that, sources said, hovering at about $18 million.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta to BoomTown, in an interview this afternoon, giving it as his main reason for joining Playlist.

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Next week in Los Angeles, Microsoft will kick off its Professional Developers Conference, a place the software giant likes to unveil all kind of news in a big launchtastic flourish.

For all the noise, it’s worth paying attention, because Monday’s outlook will be cloudy, as in cloud computing.

The day will include a speech from Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, and others on, among other topics, its cloud infrastructure service initiatives–designed to match aggressive efforts from Amazon in the space.

But who knows what else is up Microsoft’s sleeve?

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It seems the discovery of IDs and some money and clothing in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains thought to have been related to missing aviator Steve Fossett has led a search crew to a crash site of a small plane belonging to him.

A search for his remains continues at the wreckage, reports say. Fossett’s plane apparently flew into a part of a mountain.

The quest to find Fossett included a massive physical search, as well as unusual digital efforts.

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