Leaderboarded Integrates Credly to Reward Employee Performance, Influence and Industry Leadership

NEW YORK, NY and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - September 23, 2014) - Credly, the leading platform for recognizing achievement with digital badges and credentials, today announced a partnership with Leaderboarded, a universal scorekeeping service based on a lightweight gamification framework. The partnership enables organizations to recognize employees, event participants, brand ambassadors and industry peers with official digital awards when specified performance metrics are met or exceeded.

Using Leaderboarded, event organizers, industry associations, employers, and other groups select one or more sources of social and business data to automatically generate consolidated single scores and publish rankings in competitive and collaborative formats. Participating individuals compare their performance to that of their peers or themselves on their way to meeting goals.

With the new Credly integration, leaderboard managers issue digital badges or credentials to those who achieve the highest rank or reach a top tier score range, such as being in the "Top 10" among all those who performance is being tracked. Recipients showcase the official record of their accomplishment by sharing their digital badges on social and professional networks including Facebook, Twitter, their LinkedIn profile, or personal site, portfolio or blog.

"A public leaderboard is a powerful tool for measuring and ranking influence, and for engaging and motivating your community," said Toby Beresford, founder and CEO of Leaderboarded, which is headquartered at Google Campus in London. "Our integration with Credly provides leaders with special recognition for their achievement, while giving organizations who manage leaderboards new opportunities to promote their brand, events and the level of performance and engagement they value most."

Thousands of organizations issue digital credentials and Open Badges through Credly, and the Leaderboarded integration offers a powerful new way to turn each group's unique data and metrics into a standardized form of achievements that can unlock new opportunities for those who earn them.

One such group, the New Media Consortium, issues digital badges through Credly for a range of achievements, including completion of free NMC Academy courses, and also makes use of Leaderboarded at their conferences to acknowledge those engaging most meaningfully through social media with the community at large.

"Our work includes building and showcasing the future of new approaches to professional recognition across our many programs," said Gordon Jackson, Senior Director of Technology at the New Media Consortium. "The integration between Leaderboarded and Credly will help us honor those who contribute most to the community, while certifying and memorializing these achievements as part of each person's professional profile."

Leaderboarded rankings are generated from a wide range of data sources, including Klout, LinkedIn, Google Spreadsheets, Google Plus, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Slideshare, and many other web services and APIs.

"Active professionals generate authentic evidence of achievement, community involvement and industry leadership that often goes unquantified and without the recognition and rewards it deserves," said Jonathan Finkelstein, founder and CEO of Credly. "Leaderboarded helps make these accomplishments more visible, and through the connection to Credly, gives individuals verified credentials that can be parlayed into more and better opportunities."

A link to the leaderboard as it existed on the day the badge was awarded is included as historical evidence supporting each digital credential, and is maintained with the digital badge on Credly, lending important insight into the effort required to earn each achievement.

All Leaderboarded users and Credly members have immediate access to the integration through their Leaderboarded dashboard.

For more information visit:
http://www.credly.com/apps/leaderboarded

About Credly
Credly empowers the recognition of lifelong achievement by offering the leading platforms for verifying, sharing and managing digital badges and credentials. Thousands of organizations, including the New York City Department of Education, SUNY, Event Leadership Institute, Kirkpatrick Partners, University of Central Florida, EDUCAUSE, Instructure, Training Magazine, Yale University, the YMCA of Greater New York, Uber, Smithsonian, and the American Alliance of Museums, use Credly to make achievements visible. Visit Credly.com.

About Leaderboarded
Leaderboarded.com is a "software as a service" universal digital scoreboard based in the TechHub near London's Silicon Roundabout. Leaderboarded was founded by former social media agency head and founder of the Gamification Gurus leaderboard Toby Beresford, in March 2012. Leaderboarded customers include Zoopla, the Gates Foundation, MTV Australia & Capgemini.