Social network hi5 has employed a ground breaker in the Playstation game industry to kick its social gaming plan into top gear. It is still to be seen if hi5 truly realizes what it's getting in the hiring of Alex St.
John. St. John, founding father of internet game firm Wild Tangent and a previous Microsoft games evangelist will serve as president and chief technology officer at hi5. He's going to be in charge of its product development, technology, network operations and audience purchase. It'd appear silly a mid-tier social network like hi5 wants to become a leader in games. But St. John has changed the course of the game industry a pair of times in his career. As a social network, hi5 has sixty million unique monthly users, a lot of them outside of the U.S. But it seems like an also-ran next to Facebook, that has more than 325 million users, and hi5 has moved into games thanks in part to its struggle to stay relevant.
St. John recognized in an interview that hi5 desires to prove it can be more competitive in the social gaming market against the likes of Facebook and its game publishers like Zynga. But he claimed the social gaming market isn't locked up; rather, he expounded, it is just beginning. That is possibly true. But I was shocked St. John didn't just start his very own company. He left his prior start up, Wild Tangent, more than last year, and he left its board in March. He grew Wild Tangent into one of the largest privately-owned gaming sites.
But St. John stated that he does not want to try that again because in today's market it's going to be better to use the huge audience and platform of hi5 to produce a social games and entertainment business.
