Mobile chat service Tango has announced the hire of former Zynga executive Todd Arnold to lead the company's growing games division.

During his time at Zynga, Arnold led the 600-person division responsible for its core Ville business which included popular and successful social titles like Farmville.

Now Arnold will be responsible for helping game developers find success on the US-based mobile messaging application as Tango seeks to replicate the success of Asian platforms like LINE and Kakao.

Getting chatty

"I love making games, but what excited me most about joining Tango's team was the opportunity to introduce brand new audiences to games through a social mobile platform - the same way we saw first-time players discover games on web-based social networks, like Facebook," said Arnold after slipping comfortably into the role of vice president of games.

Speaking more broadly on the organisation in a press release, CTO Eric Stetton noted "Tango's games division is growing exponentially, but we recognize that its ongoing success depends heavily on the support we provide our developer network".

Tango recently announced a deal with Gameloft to bring its casual-friendly titles to the messaging application.

Since  Tango opened its platform up to game developers, the chat app has launched a total of 16 games with 12 different partners - including Gameloft - and has surpassed 150 million registered users.

[source: Market Wired]