Have you seen this feature of Google’s social network already? Google+ Ripples doesn’t get that much attention, though it is an extremely useful tool that shows you who has shared a particular post and how it was shared. An interactive graphic, completely in the Google+ circle style, then illustrates possible connection between users.
How does Google+ Ripples work?
Google+ Ripples shows the public shares of any public post in an interactive graphic. You just have to click the little dropdown arrow on the right upper corner of a post and click the “View Ripples” option to get the insights. Requirements for that option are that the post is public and has been shared already.
After clicking “View Ripples”, Google+ will show you who has publicly shared and commented on a post. A few statistics and connections between people, who shared the content, will become visible as well. If you are wondering about a discrepancy between the shares that you see on a post and the shares Google+ Ripples reveals, that is because only public shares are displayed in the Ripples animation. To view Google+ Ripples information for a specific URL, just enter the link in the top corner. That will give you a visualization for all the public shares of that URL.
Benefits of using Google+ Ripples
Google+ Ripples is a nice way to show people, who shared your post. That’s great, but by far not the only benefit. A great feature of Google+ Ripples is that it visualizes who contributed the most shares (and reshares) to a post. That can be seen from the size of a bubble. You can now identify the main advocates for your content on the first glimpse. It also shows if user that shared something are interconnected. Maybe there are pattern in the sharing behavior of your circles. After identifying your top influencers, you should maintain and intense the relationships with them.
Almost at the end of the Ripples page, you can see a time graph that shows how the link was shared over time. You can also see a cool, animated illustration about the ongoing activity on that post. Beneath the timeline on the Ripples page you can see which people who originally shared a post had the most reshares (so-called sharing hubs). Google+ Ripple also displays basic statistics for how, and in which language the link was shared.
Since there is very little statistical data offered by Google+ so far, that could be the beginning of more. For now, it is most likely the best internal Google+ metric that can be used to measure social influence in the network.
