2 departures

Levinsohn leaves Fox. Calacanis leaving AOL. Everyone is sure of the former and wondering about the latter.

One Levinsohn out. Another Levinsohn in. Ross Levinsohn President of Fox Interactive, has resigned, according to a press release that is "going around." He led the MySpace acquisition and has been on a speaking tour ever since. He's also become a darling of the VC community in the process, and no doubt that is a major factor as to why he would leave Fox now. He's leaving at the top. Smart move. Fox vet Peter Levinsohn will take his place. Sources: GigaOM and Mashable.

Whilst still unverified, it looks like the other departure is over at AOL. Rumor has it that Jason Calacanis, who sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL last year for $25M and has been running the new Netscape service, is going to leave. It would appear that Jon Miller's departure has fueled his decision. Ted's GigaOM puts it this way:

On the ouster of Miller, we are as confounded as you are. Falco, despite his resume, isn’t the kind of executive you would put in charge when your main rival is someone as nimble as Google, or as cash rich as Microsoft or as dogmatic as Yahoo. Sudden executive changes when a company is in transition to a new free model can cause anxiety amongst rank-and-file.

Falco’s appointment is another proof of the bumbling ways of Time Warner, a company known to have the uncanny ability to turn a pot of gold into a bucket of mud water.

After trying several times, I've always been happy that he was able to sell a business while it was still worth something, even if he rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I think most of them are just jealous of what he's accomplished.

Here's Vallywag's post on Jason. Pretty good, especially if you don't know what SAR stands for.


Technorati Tags: calacanis, levinsohn, fox, aol