Johnny Won, mobile and gaming platforms manager at Hill Holliday, is leaving the IPG unit to launch a startup focused on local mobile search with Zach Taylor, formerly a creative technologist at McGarryBowen. Won, who wraps up this week at Hill Holliday, offered few details about his next venture, but suggested there's plenty of room for improvement in local search. “The core problem is people don't really know what's going on around them and everything already out there sucks,” he said. To address that issue, Won plans …

Twitter will give NASCAR fans a chance to have a social conversation with legend Richard Petty. The former driver plans to celebrate turning age 75 by reaching out to fans on the social media site. Fans are encouraged to tweet questions during the days leading up to the Ask Me Anything event scheduled for Aug. 7, sponsored by Smithfield Foods. Fans who Tweet questions using the hashtag, #SFDPetty, either before or during the event, will be entered into a drawing to win two tickets to the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Charlotte, N.C., on Oct. 13, a baseball cap autographed …

Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of platform partnerships, is the latest top executive to leave the company in the wake of its initial public offering in May. Beard, who joined Facebook in 2008, publicly announced his departure in an Inside Facebook post today, according to the Inside Facebook blog. He didn't indicate what his next step will be. Beard's exit follows only a week after Carl Sjogreen announced he was leaving Facebook. The social network's CTO, Bret Taylor, gave notice in June and former corporate communications director Barry Schnitt joined Pinterest the same month in …

Local information and ratings site Yelp on Wednesday reported a 67% increase in net revenue in the second quarter after expanding into new markets overseas and on mobile devices. The company posted a net loss of $2 million, or 3 cents per share, in the quarter, compared with a loss of $1.2 million, or 8 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue increased to $32.7 million from $19.6 million a year ago. Analysts had forecast …

Can Mitt Romney's new iOS and Android app help him close the “smartphone gap”? The Romney campaign Tuesday unveiled the app that will let users know the instant Mitt announces his running mate. As Wired noted, the move appears to be 2012 update on the Obama campaign's choice to notify people of Joe Biden's selection as vice presidential selection in 2008. Perhaps Romney should go with text messaging, too. A recent study by mobile marketing firm Velti …

Android's leading share of the U.S. smartphone market remained virtually unchanged over the last three months, increasing just 0.6% to 51.6% as of June, according to the latest comScore data. The surging growth the Google platform saw in 2010 and 2011 has stalled out this year with Android reaching a majority of smartphones. Whether the strong sales of the recently released Samsung Galaxy S III will give Android renewed momentum won't be clear until third quarter quarter figures are released. Apple's iOS picked up 1.7 percentage points to increase to a 32.4% share, while RIM's …

Mobile loyalty service shopkick has hired Silicon Valley veteran Alexis Rask as head of brand partnerships for the company. As VP and general manager, brand partnerships, Rask will lead shopkick's relations with major brands in the CPG, consumer electronics, entertainment, and other industry verticals. Prior to joining the company, Rask was SVP, sales development at Federated Media. She was previously a founding member of LinkedIn's marketing solutions team and New York operations, and worked at Google on selling search marketing campaigns. Through its partner alliance program, shopkick already works on mobile marketing programs …

Mobile video service Vuclip is launching a new video ad format which promises to take the headache out of running a mobile campaign by optimizing ad creative across myriad devices and platforms. The rich media Click2Vid unit is designed to run on 5,500 devices including feature phones, smartphones and tablets without manual adjustments by brands or agencies. The new ad unit is also meant to play within the page a user is already on, rather than requiring a separate landing page. Previously, Vuclip says users would …

Mark LaNeve, formerly the top marketing executive at General Motors is joining WPP ad shop Team Detroit as chief operating officer, the agency has confirmed. Team Detroit is the holding company's multi-agency entity that creates ads and plans and buys ad time for the Ford Motor Company on a global basis. The hire was deemed important enough that Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP added a quote to the press release confirming the news late Tuesday. "Mark's joining the WPP team adds a whole new dimension to our global capability," the WPP CEO stated. "The great partnership which we enjoy …

ReachLocal reported Tuesday that revenue in Q2 2012 grew 21%, compared with the year-ago quarter. International revenue rose to 26%, up from 22% in the prior year period. On a constant foreign exchange basis, international revenue grew 50% from the prior year period and consolidated revenue grew 23%. Active advertisers across its network grew 17% to 21,300 and campaigns grew 24% to 31,500, compared with year-ago quarter.