Facebook Hires News Corp.'s Sean Ryan For Game Partnerships Post

Facebook has hired former LiveJournal CEO and recent News Corp. online gaming executive Sean Ryan to a new Director of Game Partnerships position, where he'll oversee the social network's relationship with high-profile game developers. The appointment of Ryan ends a search that Facebook began in August with a job posting that sought an executive to "develop and enhance successful partnerships and influence internal and external partners and industry stakeholders in the gaming industry." The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog reports Ryan will serve under Facebook Developer Network director Ethan Beard and work with Cory Ondrejka and Bruce Rogers on the site's game platform engineering. News Corp. hired Ryan in July to head up an online game unit built around recently acquired social game developer Irata Labs. But sources tell AllThingsD that the Facebook move has been in the offing since before Ryan took the News Corp. position. The site also reports that Making Fun's John Welch will take over Ryan's position at News Corp. Before working at News Corp., Ryan served as CEO at virtual world Meez.com, music site Listen.com and popular blogging platform LiveJournal. In a September interview, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the importance of games the the social network's popularity, but admitted that unwanted game-related notifications were "one of the biggest complaints that we get" from users.