This article is written in Finnish, here is a short refrence:

I like light board & card games. In Finnish we can them seurapelit, which translates roughly to games for company or games to enjoy with some company of your friends. Anyway, ther's nothing more satisfying than to find a new board game that your friends will start to like immediately.

Some of these kinds of games for me have been Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride, Mystery of the Abbey, Diamant, Modern Art and Bang!. They have some features in common, such as colorful interaction between the players in the game, social possibilities presented by the game systems, variety to ways to master the games and so forth. 

Some of my criteria for finding new games of this type include playing time required (one hour is pretty much the max) and the number of players the game allows (the moreoptions available the better) as well as the innovation and the ease to learn of the game mechanic.

Read the whole article (in Finnish).