How To Track Influence In Social Media – What Would Yongfook Do?

Had lunch with Pat Law today and we were discussing about BlogOut 2009 when she shared about the new project from celebrity web producer Yongfook named Rippl3.

She shared that the project was described as being a tool to ‘Set goals, track success, make sense of your social media campaigns’. Immediately, my mind started racing. How would anyone implement such a tool? More importantly, what would yongfook do ( i.e. WWYD ) to create such a tool?

Incidentally, Yongfook also goes by the name ‘Jon’, so it really is ‘WWJD’. He was born for this.

Anyway, I digress. I looked into the name ‘Rippl3′ and wondered whether Yongfook was alluding to the phenomenon of waves radiating outwards from the point where a pebble drops into a body of water. I described the phenomenon and Pat said something like, ‘that’s like the logo’ ( not exactly sure what were the exact words used ).

The logo in question:

rippl3

The phenomenon in question:

So how could such a phenomenon be used to explain the concept of tracking influence in social media?

Simple. You drop a message into a social system and track its effects across time and people further away ( in terms of network connections ) from the original recipient. I’m of course simplifying. The above is the ‘what do you do’. Not how. Not why.

The more detailed thoughts will occur after Blogout 2009. I need to digest this a little more.