Tweeted yesterday, confirmed in a press release, and buzzed about again in Boston’s tech scene this morning, Mok Oh is joining WHERE as Chief Innovation Officer. Oh is actually one of four recent Ph.D holders to join WHERE in the past few weeks. The company, which has been profitable for four years, has grown rapidly from 30 to 85 people in just a matter of months.

What exactly is behind these recent hires and in store for the company in 2011? A trail of announcements, product updates, and confirmation by WHERE’s CMO Dan Gilmartin today prove the company is ramping up to make a bigger splash in the location based deals and merchant services space.

WHERE’s activity and momentum on both the consumer side (one of the top 10 free navigation apps downloaded in the Apple app store in 2010) and advertising side (they served 1 billion ads in September, and today Gilmartin shared they passed 2 billion ads served in November) seem strong.

“The great thing about this company is we’re in a hyper growth market. And by nature of what we’re doing and how we’ve organized ourselves, our business is somewhat diversified,” Gilmartin explained. He went on to break down WHERE’s business model in terms of the consumer side (the app that connects users to local merchants), the ad side (local ads served based on user and location details), and how the company is now working to ramp up the merchant services aspects of their business.

“We’ve developed multiple revenue streams and therefore have various views into the space that position us well to grow into that market opportunity. We’ve made a few bets, and they’re really playing out for us right now,” he added.

Currently WHERE users access hyper local coupons from within the WHERE app or on their website. In Boston these mobile deals are sourced mainly by Peekaboo Mobile, Yowza, and from larger companies like Stop & Shop. To add to these mobile coupon partnerships, WHERE acquired daily deal provider LocalGinger in November to help both consumers and merchants.

“The first half of the equation is helping consumers find great merchants, which happens on the app and our website. At the same time we want to help those great merchants find the right customers who are most interested in what they’re selling,” shared Gilmartin. Where does that now today largely through their ad network, and app users are now also prompted predominantly to “Save with us” and sign up for daily deals powered by LocalGinger.

Shortly after this activity on the consumer side of their business, WHERE announced partnership with email marketing company Constant Contact — pointing to its interest in moving into the merchant services space. The goal of the partnership is to enable merchants to create their own daily deals through WHERE’s merchant services portal. These deals would then be distributed over the WHERE app to its 4M users and through WHERE’s ad network which reaches 50M people. With help from LocalGinger, WHERE will also provide Constant Contact merchants the opportunity to engage in group-buying at a hyper-local level.

As far as continuing to expand its merchant network, Gilmartin says the company remains open to all channels and that they are moving as quickly as possible. In the next few weeks they will continue to deliver on the consumer side (stay tuned!) to make the app more social.

“On the flip side,” Gilmartin offered, “We want to deliver the tools for merchants themselves to come in and buy that audience via daily deals or ads. And we want to make it really simple for merchants to be able to track that audience.”

According to Gilmartin, Oh will lead an innovative charge across multiple fronts, but specifically will help the company leverage their extensive data (they have terabytes of it) that drive recommendations and help deliver personalized ads. “We’re lucky and thrilled to have Mok’s knowledge about places, location, and relevancy. He’ll be working on a lot, but at the core it will be advancing the business to the opportunity.”

It seems like Oh is the right man for the job and to help WHERE continue to innovate and expand its merchant services offerings. Formerly Oh founded and served as CTO at Boston-based Everyscape, the company focused on creating 3D tours inside restaurants and which recently announced a big partnership with Bing to take their technology to local businesses.

Will partnerships with companies like Constant Contact, alongside a big call to action stretching across the WHERE homepage asking businesses to claim their pages be enough to onboard merchants? If you use WHERE as a consumer, will more daily deals and more personalized recommendations make it more of a go-to for you? Let us know in the comments!