Why the interest in social games?

I started using social networks in the very early stages (first Hi5 and then FB from its beginning only restricted to students). Right then I knew something interesting and with a lot of potential was going on.

Evetually I started doing freelance work for Slide, and to understand more what users wanted and the nature of the networks I started reading all I could about them. I have been hooked on the topic ever since.

Later I had the opportunity to do some contract work for Zynga, and then Hive7. At the end of 2009 I was approached by Zynga for a full time position and I jumped happily to the opportunity! It's been a great fun ride since then.

I follow sites like Inside Social Games, and Developer Analytics and have bought reports from Inside Facebook to better understand trends and the nature of user growth and engagement, sticky factors and so on.

I think the nature of social networks allows games to go back to the basics: competition, collaboration and social interaction. It's not only possible to bring games into social networks, but to create games out of the nature of the network, and there is where a great fun game design challenge exists. A challenge I deeply enjoy working on.

And to close, a tad about me and the art world.