MySpace’s China office has reportedly cut about 30 employees last month and saw its CEO depart, signalling the social network might be withdrawing from the market.
An employee at Myspace China reported the staff cuts when asked on Monday. He would not disclose how many employees remain. A Chinese news report, however, said that about two-thirds of the staff had left the office.
The Chinese version of MySpace was launched with a beta version going online in 2007.
The site, however, has advertised itself more as a social networking platform for music fans.
MySpace has also been reportedly preparing to downsize its total staff of 1,100 employees by 50 percent.
The site has been overtaken by Facebook in terms of numbers of users in the U.S. and globally. In October, the company launched a new version of the site in a bid to attract more users.
China is one of the world’s largest Internet markets, with web users reaching 450 million, according to an official count.
Almost half of those visit social networking sites, with the number of users estimated to hit 216 million for 2010, an increase from 176 million the year before, says a report from Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.
Myspace’s struggles in China follow in the footsteps of other popular U.S.-based websites that have faced obstacles cementing a following in the country. Facebook and Twitter are both blocked in the country, while Google has lost market share to China’s dominant search engine Baidu.
