MySpace China aims to double staff after 1 yr -CEO

SHANGHAI, July 17 (Reuters) - MySpace China, part of News Corp's NWSa.N online social network, hopes to have a headcount of 150 people after one year in the world's biggest Internet market, up from just over 70 now, its chief executive said. MySpace China's Beijing-based team includes engineers and product designers, and the company hopes to significantly ramp up its sales staff, Chief Executive Luo Chuan told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

Luo, the former head of Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) MSN China, was speaking on the sidelines of an event to launch a competition inviting application developers in China, Japan, South Korea and India to create online games for its platform. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook let users share images, music, videos and blogs. MySpace launched a program in February to court outside software developers in a bid to widen the gap against rival Facebook.

China overtook the United States to become the world's biggest Internet market, with 221 million Web users by the end of February, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

(Reporting by Sophie Taylor, editing by Will Waterman)

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