Inside Social Games

In Hi5’s latest move to turn its social network into more of a gaming site, the company is hiring game veteran Alex St. John to be its new president and chief technology officer. St. John is credited with helping to lead Microsoft’s efforts in computer and eventually XBox gaming, and he more recently founded online gaming company WildTangent.

So why is he joining Hi5, a company that is a year into a fundamental product shift from networking to gaming? VentureBeat caught up with him and broached the topic:

St. John acknowledged in an interview that hi5 needs 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 said that the social gaming market isn’t locked up; rather, he said, it is just beginning…. [I]n today’s market it will be easier to use the large audience and platform of hi5 to grow a social games and entertainment business.

Hi5, as readers know, has been busy rolling out a virtual currency, a games portal, chat, and avatars for users. A company press release about St. John’s new position hints at what he’s going to be working on: “St. John led several key revenue innovations at WildTangent, including a highly successful virtual currency, WildCoins, used for microcurrency transactions, and an advertising partnership with WPP to sell sponsored microcurrency to Fortune 500 brands.”

We don’t know how Hi5’s gaming efforts are currently going, but St. John seems like a promising hire for the company.