MySpace co-chief Jones hits Australia this week

The co-president of global social network giant MySpace will this week hit Australian shores to speak at an event in Sydney.

Michael Jones, formerly MySpace’s chief operating officer since April 2009, was appointed co-president of the company along with Jason Hirshhorn in February 2010, as MySpace went through a significant management shake-up that saw the company’s chief executive Owen Van Natta depart.

This week Jones will hit Australian shores to speak at the company’s “Next Chapter in Social Media” event, to be held on April 7 in Melbourne and April 8 in Sydney.

“During his first trip to Australia since taking on the role of Co-President, Jones will offer insight into the future direction for MySpace as well as an international perspective to upcoming trends for social media on a broader scale,” MySpace said in a statement inviting press to the event.

The event will be chaired by mUmBRELLA editor Tim Burrowes, and will also feature MySpace’s local managing director Rebekah Horne as well as figures from the marketing industry.

The news comes as internet monitoring companies such as Hitwise have steadily highlighted the decline in MySpace’s importance in the social networking space in Australia compared with rivals such as Facebook and even Twitter, from an internet traffic perspective.

For example, Hitwise Asia-Pacific research director Alan Long recently noted in a blog post that MySpace usage went backwards by 52.1 percent in the period from October 2008 to October 2009, compared with entire social networking industry growth of 25 percent.