Social network appointed Alex St. John, the controversial founder and former CEO for online games network WildTangent, as its new president and chief technology officer, responsible for the company's product development, technology, network operations and audience acquisition.

Established in 2003, hi5 claims more than 60 million users worldwide, a fraction of Facebook's 325 million users but enough to make the site one of the top 20 largest in the world. The company hopes to grow its presence in the social gaming space, launching a series of titles like The Legend of Spirehold and Organized Crime last spring.

St. John believes that hi5 will need to create original, unique games in order to find success in this space. "Chasing the crowd is not an interesting strategy," he commented in an interview with VC news site VentureBeat. “I would like to do something highly differentiated."

He stepped down from WildTangent, the company he founded in 1998 last year due to personal reasons. During his time there, he helped grow the network's audience to 30 million monthly active users and predicted the death of video game consoles, declaring online PC gaming as their successor. Prior to WildTangent, he helped create DirectX and was a games evangelist at Microsoft.

Now at hi5, St. John says he'll help transform the platform into a social gaming and entertainment destination: "I intend to have a very aggressive content strategy. I hope to surprise folks. The social game party started without me. But hi5 is the best positioned to jump into the middle of the party."