NEW YORK, March 10, 2014 (ADOTAS) – Bitly, the company committed to maximizing the power of the link, today announced the addition of two executives to its revamped leadership team led by new CEO Mark Josephson. The new executives are Rob Platzer as Chief Technology Officer and Melissa Wallace as Vice President of Marketing. The company alslo announced that Moz, the industry’s most popular provider of search engine and social optimization software, has chosen Bitly to provide comprehensive click tracking technology and data to discover, score and display inbound links from across the Internet.
Bitly shortens nearly half a billion links and generates more than six billion clicks each month across virtually every social site, brand site and media site in almost every country in the world. Bitly’s Brand Tools service allows marketers greater branding and optimization opportunities across their entire content and marketing strategy, including social, SMS and email.
Tasked with putting that resource to work for marketers, Wallace and Platzer are strategically focused on driving brand value though the rich insights available from Bitly’s encoded links. The new hires complement the recent addition of Lead Scientist Brian Eoff and Head of Engineering Jehiah Czebotar. Together the new team is developing a full range of tools to help marketers, brands and publishers identify and elevate actionable insight from their links to help them make better decisions.
Bitly’s new executives bring expertise and experience from across the digital media realm:
Chief Technical Officer, Rob Platzer: Former CTO of AOL’s Patch and Outside.In, Rob is an 18-year Tech industry veteran with deep experience building distributed systems, data intensive applications and innovative products that connect the world. Combined with Rob’s approach to cultivating talent, teams and culture, he is responsible for leading Bitly’s technical strategy and talented team of engineers and data scientists. Twitter: @orbitalsander.
Vice President of Marketing, Melissa Wallace: Melissa brings 18 years of marketing experience from her consumer, B2B and agency background primarily focused in tech and entertainment. Most recently known for her efforts to rebrand and accelerate the marketing strategy as VP of Marketing at Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce.com for $689M), Melissa oversees all of Bitly’s marketing initiatives, including brand, digital, event, product, and content marketing. Twitter: @velocigirl.
“Bitly’s links are an incredibly powerful tool for marketers to build their brands and optimize campaign performance,” said Mark Josephson (pictured), CEO, Bitly. “The addition of Melissa and Rob to our team accelerates our ability to bring new tools and insights that help our customers make better decisions; all while remaining an essential service to the Internet as a whole.”
Moz Partnership
Bitly’s new partnership gives Moz customers a clear and complete understanding of who is linking to any web site and how relevant or valuable those links are for the brand based on the number and frequency of clicks.
Bitly link intelligence is the most comprehensive source for tracking links, clicks and social shares across the web. Previously Moz had been using link data from Twitter to rank relevance. The addition of Bitly’s broad dataset provides Moz clients with inbound link insights from across the web, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, the blogosphere, online media and multiple other sources.
“The Bitly click dataset is hands down the broadest and most authoritative available to anyone looking for information on how their content and brand is performing across the web. Marketers armed with these insights are able to build campaigns that are designed to optimize attention through content,” said Rand Fishkin, co-founder and Wizard of Moz. “Previously we were using just Twitter data to understand the relevance of shared content. While that’s a great start, our clients are looking for a holistic view. Bitly’s click data gives us a much more comprehensive and accurate picture by looking at the entire web and drilling into actual clicks, which is more valuable than simply looking at how frequently content is shared.”
Brand marketers using Bitly are also able to identify recently created URLs and links within seconds and highlight the most clicked content for effective campaign planning and testing.
“Bitly owns a unique view of how links are shared across the internet,” said Josephson. “Insights gleaned from our differentiated data set can help all marketers make better decisions. We’re excited to put this into action with Moz so their clients can better understand how content and links are shared across the Web.”
For more information about Bitly and its services please visit: www.bitly.com.
About Moz
Moz is the industry’s most popular provider of search engine and social optimization software, easy-to-use tools and tutorials enabling businesses of all sizes to grow their traffic in the areas where people search most. The company is powered by a passionate group of Mozzers who aspire to provide pioneering technology that empowers users to leverage the reach of the Internet — increasing visibility through organic search and social media presence. The software’s API capabilities connect the Linkscape web crawl service with web-based campaign applications, Open Site Explorer and dozens of additional third party offerings — helping brands gain greater mindshare easily and effectively. With a mission focused on education as well as technical innovation, SEOmoz hosts a powerful community of contributors and marketers united in bringing beneficial, user-oriented content to the top of the page.
About Bitly
Since 2008, Bitly has been committed to the power of the link. Privately held and based in New York City, Bitly shortens nearly half a billion links per month as an integral part of social, SMS, email efforts (and more) from publishers, brands, marketers, government organizations, educational institutions, non-profits and individual users. Processing more than six billion clicks on those links per month, Bitly remains the leader in an optimal sharing experience, and continues to unveil new products while generating one of the most valuable proprietary datasets in the world today.
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