By Chris Testa (@crstesa) and Jeff Schenck (@jeffschenck)

Big news!

Today, we’re thrilled to release Adly Blingalytics as open-source software.  As mentioned at SemTech2011 in San Francisco, this is the code that powers Adly’s real-time business intelligence reporting.

Simply put, Blingalytics is the first and only open source business intelligence platform in Python.

Built for Business Users

Developed to the exacting specifications of business users here at Adly, Blingalytics is our core infrastructure. In the big picture, it enables us to monitor how many influencer tweets are going out and how much money we are bringing in every day, to manage cash flow for the business.

Functionally, it enables us to do both formal and ad-hoc reporting, to monitor everything from celebrity influence and advertising campaign performance, to the efficiency of our operations groups.

As our CEO Arnie says, “Every business collects data. It’s being able to effectively process, analyze and leverage that data that makes a difference in your results.”

Benefits / Use Cases

Blingalytics is an easy way to connect to a data source, define reports, define views into those reports, and then output the data to your presentation layer (dashboards, etc.).

We’re releasing it as open source software because we are confident it can offer similar value to you, helping you do:

1.) Social Analytics: Track social engagement metrics and KPIs achieved on 3rd party platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. in real time, to provide meaningful performance analytics.

2.) Reporting: Create custom reports that make it easy to conduct the analysis you need to convert data into meaningful Business Intelligence.

3.) Billing / Finance Integration: Integrate operational analytics with 3rd party financial software for billing, revenue reporting and more.

Available today

The Blingalytics Python package makes it easy to slice and dice your business KPIs, whether you’re looking at retweets, click-through rates, net revenue, or how many virtual tractors you’ve sold to your Farmville ranchers.

Blingalytics takes care of the gritty details of optimally crunching the numbers, so that you can jump straight to defining your view into your business stats and performance analytics.

Why Open Source?

Everything we do here at Adly is built on open-source tools, and releasing Blingalytics comes out of our commitment to the open-source community.

Other open source projects and contribution by Adly developers include:

– Eric Van Dewoestine, an avid Vim Golfer, maintains eclim (http://eclim.org/) – a project that brings Eclipse functionality into the Vim editor.

– Josiah Carlson’s Python Programmers Editor (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pype/) is an excellent cross-platform editor that balances between the fully featured Emacs and the simplicity of idle.

– Igor Rashnitsov, Adly’s Frontie Extraordinaire maintains Public Fox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/public-fox/), a FireFox plugin that locks down FireFox on public access terminals.

Questions / Feedback?

We look forward to hearing about your projects and are happy to help brainstorm on how Blingalytics can help.

On Twitter: @blingalytics
Docs: http://blingalytics.readthedocs.org/
Code: http://github.com/adly/blingalytics

P R E S S   R E L E A S E

ADLY DEBUTS ADLY ANALYTICS

Influencer Dashboard Helps Brands and Celebrities

Understand their Fans

Beverly Hills, CA – July 8, 2011 – Adly, a platform that monetizes celebrity distribution in social media, today announced the beta launch of its complimentary brand and celebrity influencer dashboard, Adly Analytics.

Now in testing with Adly’s top celebrities, Adly Analytics is designed to help top influencers manage and grow their audiences on Twitter. The simple, secure dashboard provides brands and celebrities with audience demographics and reveals:

– Top Mentions: which top influencers and fans are messaging you, mentioning you, and retweeting your content, so that you never miss a chance to engage.

– Also Follows: which other celebrities and brands your fans also follow, and how many fans you share in common, to better understand your fans’ interests. (We also reveal audience cross-over: how many of your fans are following a given influencer, and how many of their fans are following you.)

– Top Followers: which influencers are following you, and who your “Mega Fans” are (the ones with the greatest reach and potential influence) to better focus your attention.

– Follower Growth: the increase or decrease in your audience over time –- essential feedback that helps you manage your approach.

– Gender: the gender breakdown of your audience, and how it compares to that of the average Twitter audience, for greater insight into your appeal.

– City, State and Country: the geographic breakdown of your audience in your top 20 cities, states and countries, and how it compares to that of the average Twitter audience. This can help inform both online and offline promotions, advertising campaigns, tours, personal appearances, PR and more.

“Celebrities and brands have unique needs when it comes to Twitter,” said Arnie Gullov-Singh, CEO of Adly. “With such large audiences, they need help prioritizing their inbound messages and optimizing their outbound activity to keep followers engaged. The first step is to understand and energize your most influential fans. Adly Analytics addresses this need.”

Adly Analytics also addresses some of the account security concerns faced by high profile Twitter users. Celebrities and brands are able to grant managers, agents and staff access to their Adly Analytics without sharing their Twitter passwords. This enables teams to glean meaningful audience insights that can inform future planning.

For instance, using Adly Analytics:

– Snoop Dogg (@SnoopDogg) knows that he has more Twitter fans in Texas than he has in New York. #AustinRocks.

– Jet Blue (@JetBlue) can see that 24 percent of its followers are fans of 50 Cent (@50cent). #MightWantAnUpgrade.

– ESPN (@espn) can see that 24 percent of their followers are fans of @BarackObama. #YesWeCan.

– Paris Hilton (@ParisHilton) knows she has more fans in common with Britney Spears (@BritneySpears) (2.1 million) than she does with Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) (1.7 million). #BlondsHaveMoreFun.

– Old Spice (@OldSpice) can see that 28 percent of its followers are fans of Charlie Sheen (@CharlieSheen). #FitForAWarlock.

– Taylor Swift (@TaylorSwift13) knows that 48 percent of her followers are fans of Katy Perry (@KatyPerry). #BlondeVs.Brunette.

– Paul Pierce (@PaulPierce34) knows that the only people that talk more about him than the Celtics fans do are the Lakers fans… #InYourHead.

– Whole Foods (@WholeFoods) can see that 23 percent of its followers are fans of Martha Stewart (@MarthStewart). #ItsAGoodThing.

– Cristiano Ronaldo (@Cristiano) knows that 40 percent of his followers are fans of Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite (@Kaka). #FriendlyCompetition.

– Giuliana Rancic (@GiulianaRancic) knows that her top followers are Justin Bieber (@JustinBieber) the world’s pop leader, and Barack Obama (@BarackObama) the #LeaderoftheFreeWorld.

– The New York Times (@NYTimes) can see that 29 percent of its followers are fans of CNN Breaking News (@CNNbrk). #NewsJunkies.

– Charlie Sheen (@CharlieSheen) knows that his top name-droppers are Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), Sean ‘Diddy Dirty Money’ Combs (@IAmDiddy) and Jimmy Fallon (@JimmyFallon). #BigBoysofSocial.

– Fox News (@FoxNews) can see that the Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) is following them. #KeepingAnEyeOnTheCompetition.

– Shaquille O’Neal (@Shaq) knows that he’s the most followed athlete by the fans of @NikeBasketball. #WinOrGoHome.

– Nicole Sn00ki Polizzi (@Sn00ki) knows that she has gained 1.5 million users in the past 12 months. #OvernightSensation.

– Virgin America (@VirginAmerica) can see that 32 percent of its followers are fans of Southwest Air (@SouthwestAir). #LowCostCompetition.

– RevRun (@RevRunWisdom) knows that his most high-impact retweeters are Nick Cannon (@NickCannon), Tyrese Gibson (@Tyrese) and Questo of The Roots (@QuestLove). #Righteous.

Get started: Adly Analytics is available today to all Adly celebrities, and available by invitation to other celebrities as well as brands on Twitter.

Not in the Adly Network? Tweet us @Adly to let us know you want your Adly Analytics, or visit Adly.com/Analytics to complete the invite request form.

Already on Adly? Simply:

1.    Log-in to your Adly account.

2.    Click on the new Audience tab on the right.

3.    Click on Top Mentions, Also Follows or any of the 12 data tabs.  Enjoy!

About Ad.ly
Adly is a platform that monetizes celebrity distribution in social media. We make it easy for brands to connect with consumers via the most influential celebrities, athletes and artists in social media. Based in Beverly Hills, CA, Adly is backed by GRP Partners, Greycroft Partners and prominent angel investors. To learn more, visit http://Adly.com

Chris Testa of Adly at SemTech 2011

By Chris Testa
Director, Engineering
Adly, Inc.

Earlier this month, it was my privilege to present “How Hollywood Learned to Love the Semantic Web” at SemTech 2011, the conference on semantic technology.

Here’s the story behind that presentation and today’s video interview and “How to” guide on SemanticWeb.com.

In late 2010, we at Adly had hit a scalability wall.

We already had 1,000 celebrities in our Twitter endorsement network, and I anticipated there’d be thousands more to come as Twitter went mainstream around the world.

We needed to automate the process of matching those 1,000 celebrities with our 150 brand advertisers — a process that had previously been highly subjective, tapping our team’s tribal knowledge.

Further, our system needed to be designed to scale to accommodate the new celebrities we were attracting every day.

I needed to find — and gain programmatic access to — in-depth profiles and brand-affiliation data on thousands of celebrity artists, athletes and experts.

Enter Linked Data

I had done a project at University of Maryland with Prof. Jim Hendler’s MINDSWAP program during undergrad. But I was skeptical of most Semantic Web technologies as being frankly overwrought and too complex for my everyday use.

Through both my IBM Extreme Blue internship and work at Google and YouTube, I’d seen little if any practical application of SemTech on the job.

But with a pressing business need and few resources, I started exploring the freely and open Linked Data sets that might help us easily aggregate and integrate brand affinity data.

A Treasure Trove

In a review of the Linking Open Data Cloud, I identified Freebase’s celebrity pages — complete with “wears,” “shops at,” “eats at” data and more — as a treasure trove for brand matches.

From musicians like 50 Cent and TV personalities like Audrina Patridge, to athletes like Serena Williams and Nick Swisher of the New York Yankees, Freebase made it easy to access, vet and ingest extensive profile data.

We were quickly able to bring in everything from basic profile data (profession, age, marital status, etc.) to existing brand affinities with clothiers, cars, resorts, retailers and more.

Let the Games Begin

But before I could trust the Freebase data, I needed to accurately match each Freebase profile with the right Twitter identity — a process called reconciling.

It turns out that humans clearly beat computers in one key area, which is saying when things are the same and when they’re different.

So we created a reconciliation matching game pairing Freebase profiles with @Names in a simple “match” vs. “no match” fashion.

We invited our expert talent team to play, sorting the celebrity wheat from the mis-match chaff at least twice for each @Name until the reconciliations were done.

The game made easy work of the initial 1,000 celebrities, and has made it easy to onboard new celebrities as well. (Co-creator Jeff Schenck goes as far as to call it “beautiful and elegant.”)

Best of all, comments from the talent team included, “that was fun” and “when can we do that again?” We are contemplating publishing the game to tap the power of fans.

A Scalable Solution

Within weeks, we had put Freebase to work in a scalable solution that brought profile data, summary bios, professions, etc. directly into our BI Interface, “Blingalytics.”

That made it easy for the talent team to filter and sort celebrities by a number of attributes, including gender, age, parental status (yes / no), etc.

For the first time, the team could do such seemingly simple tasks as quickly sort all of the American Football players in our network into a SuperBowl campaign, and then rank them by performance (ability to drive consumer traffic on the Web).

Without phone calls or emails to agents, the team could find all of the actresses in our network that are moms and reach the decision-making moms on Twitter that CPGs want to reach.

Now six months into the project, we are contributing corrections and updates back into Freebase, and have our eye on creating a robust celebrity affinity graph.

Click here to read more about the process I followed.

Better Brand Matches Make for Happy Advertisers

In business outcomes, we have been able to automate the initial matching of the now 1,200 celebrities in our network with the brands we serve.

Not only did we streamline the process of celebrity selection and make it easier to avoid brand conflicts, but we also enabled the talent team to make surprising or counter-intuitive matches.

For instance, who knew Adam Corolla was a carpenter for 13 years before becoming a radio show talk host? He could endorse brands like Home Depot, Lowes, Ryobi or Stanley, etc. with authority.

Most of all, better brand matching has resulted in more effective campaigns, from superior audience engagement (conversations inspired) to increased campaign performance (retweets, clicks-through, etc.).

Check out my video and 5 tips to get started on SemanticWeb.com and let me know your thoughts on Twitter @crstesa – hope to hear from you soon.

Professional Skateboarder Ryan Sheckler Drives the Most Consumer Traffic to Brand Advertisers’ Sites, Followed Closely by the Boston Celtic’s Paul Pierce

Beverly Hills, CA – May 4, 2011 – Adly, which runs celebrity endorsements in social media, today revealed the top 10 most influential athletes on Twitter.

According to the Q1 Adly Consumer Influence Index, the athlete that drives the most consumer visits to brands’ sites is professional skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, followed closely by Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics. Lamar Odom of the LA Lakers and Olympic Speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno are tied for third, followed by Nick Swisher of the New York Yankees.

“Twitter’s dramatic growth over the past 12 months is due in large part to it’s adoption by athletes and artists — who bring millions of passionate fans with them to the social web,” said Arnie Gullov-Singh, CEO, Adly, Inc. “These celebrities create the lion’s share of the content that people want. They are the new ‘Prime Time’ in digital media.”

Throughout Q1, Adly athletes cemented their roles as tastemakers in media & entertainment, consumer electronics and more. The following athletes drove the most visits to brands’ sites, videos, apps and more:

1. Ryan Sheckler — Professional Skateboarder — 1,825,676 Followers
Find Ryan on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/RyanSheckler

2. Paul Pierce — Boston Celtics, NBA — 1,818,226 Followers
Find Paul on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/paulpierce34

3. Lamar Odom — LA Lakers, NBA — 1,427,831 Followers
Find Lamar on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/RealLamarOdom

4. Apolo Anton Ohno — Olympic Speedskater, USA – 252,889 Followers
Find Apolo on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/ApoloOhno

5. Nick Swisher — New York Yankees, MLB — 1,319,996 Followers
Find Nick on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NickSwisher

6. Jalen Rose –- Phoenix Suns, Retired, NBA –- 296,382 Followers
Find Jalen on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/JALENROSE

7. Steven Jackson — St. Louis Rams, NFL – 68,688 Followers
Find Steven on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/sj39

8. Kirk Morrison — Jacksonville Jaguars, NFL – 363,962 Followers
Find Kirk on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/kirkmorrison5

9. Darnell Docket — Arizona Cardinals, NFL — 66,341 Followers.
Find Darnell on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/ddockett

10. Shaun Phillips — San Diego Chargers, NFL – 424,864 Followers
Find Shaun on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/ShaunPhillips95

About the Ad.ly Consumer Influence Index
The Adly Consumer Influence Index ranks celebrities in the Adly Influencer Network by a variety of factors to identify the most effective endorsers over a given period of time, in a particular vertical market or a specific demographic. It uses Adly’s proprietary internal ranking system to normalize performance data and establish ‘celebrity averages’ for a variety of engagement and performance indicators.

The debut issue revealed the most influential celebrities on Twitter overall during Q4, 2010, including Lauren Conrad, Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Snoop Dogg and more.

About Ad.ly
Adly runs celebrity endorsements in social media. It helps brands connect with consumers via the most influential celebrities, athletes and artists on today’s most popular platforms. Based in Beverly Hills, CA, Adly is backed by GRP Partners, Greycroft Partners and prominent angel investors. To learn more, visit http://ad.ly.

Contact:
Krista Thomas
VP Marketing, Adly
Krista@Adly.com and 415.202.3523

The area: Testing/QA
The location: Adly HQ, Beverly Hills, CA.

Adly’s automation engineer will guarantee that our company’s software works every time for every user while scaling to the highest levels. We tackle huge technical challenges that push the limits of computer science. Our team is a collaborative startup team that uses a weekly deployment schedule gated by continuous integration of unittests and system-level Selenium tests.

The engineering team at Adly supports the highest profile Twitter & Facebook accounts by providing insights into their follower’s demographics and revenue generating opportunities.

You are a software development engineer who is skilled in Quality Assurance processes and testing methodologies. Your abilities include developing suites of automated tests for server and client side applications. You are self starting, creative, driven, and able to work in a fast paced environment.

Responsibilities:

– Design and develop automated test case suites.
– Execute and maintain the suite of automated test cases.
– Provide thorough documentation of testing results.
– Design and develop test applications, integrate them into continuous integration for use in software product verification.

Requirements:

– BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent (PhD a plus).
– At least 4 years of relevant industry experience. Experience with Python, HTML stack including JavaScript, and Selenium.
– Knowledge of git branching workflows, must be comfortable with using github, branching & merging.
– Knowledge of networking and Linux environments including the continuous integration server Jenkins (based off of Hudson).
– Knowledge of mobile devices, iOS and Android platforms and their interfaces a plus.

Qualified candidates should send a resume and cover letter to Jobs@Adly.com. Thanks!

It takes place at the Marina Del Rey Ritz-Carlton on Monday, May 2, and we hope to see you there!

Adly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh will be a panelist on the 12 noon – 12:45 p.m. session called: Advertising and Marketing Roundtable: What Are the Secrets to Social Media Campaign Success?

Moderator: Michael Kassan, CEO and Chairman of MediaLink LLC
Panelists:
– David Lang, President of Mindshare Entertainment, North America
– Arnie Gullov-Singh, CEO, Adly
– David Eastman, CEO of North America/Worldwide Director of Digital at JWT
– Manny Anekal, Global Director of Brand Advertising at Zynga
– Jordan Glazier, President and CEO of Eventful
– Vince Broady, CEO and Co-Founder of thisMoment, Inc.

No ticket? You can still buy one here.

The Ritz-Carlton is at 4375 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Adly helps Marketers cut through the noise and connect with consumers via the most influential artists and athletes online.

We’re thrilled to be a value driver on the Twitter ecosystem.

Adly by the numbers:

– 24,000 endorsements to date
– 1,000 celebs in our network
– 150 brands, including Microsoft, NBC, Sony, Old Navy, Hyatt & more.
– Avg. campaign size $50K – $75K
– Avg. 6 – 12 celebs
– Avg. 49,000 visits / clicks
– Avg. $1 – to – $2 CPC

(These are the Facebook “Like” Pages that you create for your business or your brand — the inherently commercial brand pages that people have to “Like” in order to receive messages from. Here’s Snoop Dogg’s, for example.)

Given the success of our product on Twitter, the scale of Facebook, and the popularity of celebrity endorsements (a $50 Billion industry), our Facebook product was met with excitement from brands and celebrities alike.

That excitement was fueled by results:

Ad.ly’s celebrity endorsements on Facebook performed very well – driving an impressive five percent click-through rate (5% CTR) to advertisers’ sites and a flood of “Likes” on celebrities’ Pages, in a purely opt-in community that consumers love.

That being said, we regret to inform our celebrities and advertisers that we have complied with Facebook’s request to no longer offer celebrity endorsements on Facebook.

Although we have had numerous discussions with Facebook, we have not been able to come to an agreement as to how to work together.

We are disappointed by this news, and feel that it is a step backward for the social media industry.

Here’s why:

Celebrities, artists and athletes are becoming a driving force on Facebook, as they are on Twitter, and as they no doubt will be on social platforms to come.

Social networks are starting to resemble TV networks, wherein consumers tune-in based on the content available, and brands align themselves with that content and the audiences it attracts.

On television, the most popular content features celebrities, artists and athletes. On social networks, it’s a similar dynamic, only the content is being produced and distributed by the celebrities themselves – attracting tens of millions of fans.

As an advertising-supported industry, we should welcome celebrity generated content and welcome brands’ interest in tapping into the vast audiences that follow them – just as TV networks have done for the past 50+ years.

Moving forward:

We will continue to try to work with Facebook to bring Ad.ly endorsements back into Facebook Pages, and we will keep you informed of our progress on that front.

Meanwhile, we’ll get back to our core business, helping brands connect with consumers via the most influential celebrities, artists and athletes on Twitter.

Fridays have gone to the dogs

Boxer "Sugar" Shane Mosley fights Manny Pacquiao on May 7, 2011 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Beverly Hills, CA – March 22, 2011 – Boxer “Sugar” Shane Mosley has taken to Twitter to start a pre-fight battle with rival Manny Pacquiao through a series of witticisms on Twitter.

Boxing fans can follow the fray via @SugarShaneM on Twitter or by searching for #SugarTime at Search.Twitter.com. The first salvo has already been fired.

“Fans want the story behind the fight, and I’m here to give it to them — unfiltered, unedited and in its purest form” said Shane Mosley. “I’m using Twitter to let my fans know exactly how I feel about Pacquiao… It’s #SugarTime.”

The pre-battle rattle was conceived with the help of Adly, which advised Shane Mosley, Untouchable J Productions and Introspect Entertainment on the best ways to leverage social media to engage fans on Twitter leading up to the epic match.

Adly, Untouchable J Productions and Introspect Entertainment are already in discussion with brands that want to work with Shane Mosley for endorsements on Twitter.

“For the first time, fans are part of the pre-fight battle of wits and can directly connect with the world’s top boxers on Twitter,” said Arnie Gullov-Singh, CEO, Adly “Shane could win this fight before it even starts, and brands want to associate themselves with this moment in history.”

The highly anticipated bout between Shane Mosley and Manny Pacquiao takes place on May 7, 2011 at the MGM Grand, and is available pay-per-view on Showtime.

“Sugar” Shane Mosley is the winner of world titles in three weight divisions, and the former WBA Welterweight Super Champion. Manny Pacquiao is the reigning World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight world champion and the International Boxing Organization (IBO) junior welterweight champion.

About Untouchable J Productions

Untouchable J Productions is a TV film production company, and is the parent company to Everyday Rich and Ruthless “ERAR” clothing. It is headquartered out of Los Angeles, CA.

About Introspect Entertainment

Introspect Entertainment is a multi-dimensional management and entertainment company that focuses on music, television, film, sports and branding.

About Adly

Adly runs celebrity endorsements in social media. It helps brands connect with consumers via the most influential celebrities, athletes and artists on today’s most popular platforms. Based in Beverly Hills, CA, Adly is backed by GRP Partners, Greycroft Partners and prominent angel investors. To learn more, visit http://adly.com.