Chinese Myspace boss quits

CHINESE WHISPERS have it that CEO of MySpace China, Luo Chuan, has quit the company due to differences of opinion over how the site should be run locally.

Chinese blog, Mobinode, was first to report the rumours that Luo would be deleting his account with the social not-working company, which he only joined in 2006, after a stint being CEO of MSN China.

Western web companies haven’t generally got a great track record when it comes to adapting themselves to the Chinese cyber market, and it was perhaps originally for this reason that when MySpace.cn launched in April 2007, it was fairly independent of News Corp, the owner of MySpace worldwide.

In fact, possibly the strongest connection to News Corp - which held only a minority stake in the local Chinese site, alongside International Data Group’s VC arm and China Broadband Capital Partners – was Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s Chinese-born wife. Deng is Myspace China’s chief of strategy and also sits on the board of the Chinese operation.

Although unconfirmed, it appears problems arose when Luo, taking his cue from the fact Myspace China was actually supposed to have something of an independent mandate, insisted on running the site that way. Yes, the bloody cheek of him. Apparently, though, the international bosses were having none of it and upped the pressure on Luo to integrate the Chinese Myspace into the “global version”. So much for learning from past mistakes.

Luo will now purportedly start work at Beijing-based online video media company Netmovie. He might find it friendlier there. µ