Jason and I are really excited to have Ryan Freitas joining the Plinky team. Ryan comes from Adaptive Path where he did led the recent MySpace redesign and a lot of the work on Plazes and Sphere, both of which had recent exits. In short, he’s a user experience guru with a great track record. It’s a boon that Ryan and Jason have known each other for years. I’m really looking forward to working with Ryan.

We are looking to bring a couple more people on the team at this point. Check out the Plinky blog for details.

I got an email today from a friend who read the VentureBeat story about Ryan coming on board and asked something along the lines of “why are you hiring such a high-level guy so early on?” Making interactive design both feel and workgreat is a daunting task. There are many sites out there that look cool but do terribly at achieving their business objectives, e.g., getting someone to buy a product or generating a ton of click-throughs. All form. no function. On the flip side, there are many sites that are great businesses but are very light on design and, many times, emotional appeal. All function, no form. Striking not just good but optimalbalance between form and function requires a level of understanding of both the philosophy behind the user experience and the driving forces behind the business as well as ongoing fine-grained experimentation/iteration. Ryan is just the person we need to get this right.