Speaker Profile

Andy Halliday
VP and GM, Local Content Studio, MerchantCircle

Andy Halliday is the vice president and general manager of Local Content Studio, a platform he architected to bring short-format information and expert articles onto MerchantCircle that capture the “local tail” of consumer interest on the Web.

A seasoned technology entrepreneur, Halliday has a long history of taking product visions to reality. In 2004 he was the founder of OurStory.com and Tribbit.com. In 2008 he founded Tagvault.org, the software industry member organization under IEEE that provides tools and technology for software ID tags for enterprise software asset management.

Early in his career, Halliday played strategic roles in specialty retailing, first as entertainment group president for Edison Brothers Stores, which included Dave & Buster’s and TimeOut Family Amusement Centers, a large mall-based video arcade chain later sold to Namco. He was the cofounder and president of Simon Brand Ventures, a key division of Simon Property Group, the nation’s largest retail mall developer. In 1998 he crossed the divide from brick-and-mortar to the Internet, joining Excite.com as its first vice president and general manager of electronic commerce. Halliday developed shopping.excite.com in partnership with Intel’s Online Services. From Excite@Home, he was recruited to become the chief executive officer of Contact.com, and later the first chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital entity investing in technology for the IC. Before founding OurStory.com, he was a cofounder of Open Field Software and vice president business development at Spoke Software.

Halliday holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College.

About MerchantCircle
Founded in 2005, MerchantCircle is the largest online network of local business owners, combining social networking features with a variety of free marketing tools that enable merchants to maximize their online visibility. Currently, more than 1.3 million merchants use the MerchantCircle network to upload pictures, blog, create coupons and newsletters, and connect with customers and other merchants. Local consumers can find more than 20 million business listings through www.merchantcircle.com or major search engines in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. In addition to its free services, MerchantCircle offers a portfolio of premium online advertising solutions including search engine marketing and instant Web site development.