MerchantCircle, Inc. announced that Navam Welihinda has joined the company as director of finance. Welihinda will lead the company's financial management as MerchantCircle builds on its member base of more than 1.3 million merchants. Welihinda comes to the company from Sierra Ventures, where he evaluated investment opportunities in the software sector, helped shape investment strategy, and provided portfolio companies with counsel on operational models and other capital raise strategies. Prior to Sierra Ventures, Welihinda held analyst positions at Insight Ventures in New York and American Capital Strategies in Washington, D.C. At both companies Welihinda performed due diligence and helped to close several investments in early-stage technology companies.

MerchantCircle, Inc. Presents at Search Engine Strategies San Francisco 2010, Aug-18-2010 02:30 PM. Venue: Moscone West, 4th St & Howard St, San Francisco, California, United States. Speakers: Mark Munroe, Director of Search Audience.

MerchantCircle, Inc. has launched a new social gaming program that identifies and rewards the most connected members within the MerchantCircle network. 'MerchantCircle Mayors' was introduced to the over 1.3 million members of MerchantCircle in early June 2010, and based on the early returns, has been met with immediate adoption from business owners. Since rolling out the Mayors program in beta two weeks ago, the competition to become the respective mayor of over 25,000 U.S. cities has gotten stiff, with mayors already declared in more than 7,500 cities to date. Most notably, invitations to join by members to non-MerchantCircle business owners have increased 59% since the program was launched. To optimize the rollout of Mayors, MerchantCircle also redesigned its user dashboard and, as a result, has seen a substantial lift in content created by merchants.