CEO of MySpace China Resigns; Differences Over Company's Independent Direction: Reports
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
According to multiple reports coming out of China, the CEO of MySpace China, Luo Chuan, has resigned, following differences with the company about the strategic direction. Luo was the former CEO of MSN in China, and joined MySpace in 2006. The company released the first test version of MySpace.cn in April 2007. MySpace hasn't officially commented on this yet.
This Chinese arm of MySpace was set up to be independent from News Corp, even though Wendi Deng, the Chinese-born wife of Rupert Murdoch, has been functioning as the chief of strategy for MySpace's China operation. News Corp (NYSE: NWS). has only a minority stake in, alongside International Data Group's VC arm and China Broadband Capital Partners. Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe the founder of MySpace, also own a minority stake each in the venture.
This continues the trouble big U.S. internet companies have had in Asian and other local markets including China, Japan, Russia and Korea...both on the search/portal side as well as on social networking side, other local companies have had better success.
By Rafat Ali