Slingshot Labs, a research and development arm for News Corp.’s digital properties, has lost its two top execs. President Josh Berman and EVP Strategy and Product Diego Berkadin gave News Corp Digital Chief Jon Miller their resignations last week, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Like a plethora of ex MySpace and Fox execs, they are likely to be starting their own company.
This leaves Slingshot Labs in disarray at a crucial moment. Their “LinkedIn Killer” product, internally known as WSJ Connect or Streetfeed, is supposed to go into beta testing next month. We first wrote about the project last year.
Slighshot Labs has also had a couple of other successful product launches. Daily Fill is still going strong. Another project, SocialPlan, is now the backbone of the new MySpace Events. MySpace even grabbed that team out of Slingshot and made them full time MySpace employees.
This also marks the departure of the last MySpace founder from News Corp. Josh Berman was the COO of MySpace at the time it was acquired. Chris DeWolfe (CEO), Tom Anderson (President), Aber Whitcomb (CTO), and Colin Digiaro (SVP Sales) have all now left to work on different projects. Except for Tom, it’s not clear what he’s up to these days.