Salesforce recently added a new feature to Chatter that allows users to re-share posts with their followers, with a group, or via link.  I am SUPER thrilled for this ability — it has been really helpful to highlight, share, and/or amplify information.  For instance, if I shared a post from Jim Halpert it would look like this:

Users can click on “originally posted” to view the author’s original post

Another feature simultaneously released is “Chatter Influence,” an out-of-the-box feature that basically assigns each user in a Chatter organization an influence ‘score’ based on a secret algorithm around how frequently you share information that people like or comment on.  For example, Jim Halpert is considered an “Active Influencer” in his org:

So here is my question: if I share a colleague’s post, and people like and/or comment on the post that I share (rather than the original post), who gets the influence “credit” — the original author or the re-sharer? (I threw this out to Salesforce, who, as usual, responded quickly and they are looking into it.)

• Philosophically, who really should get the credit – the original author? The one who shared?  Maybe both? Ultimately if the shared post gets more attention, it’s probably because the original author may not have as large of a personal following, or they didn’t know to share with a specific group in order to reach a larger audience. In this case the post had much less influence before it was shared, but if the post had never existed it would carry no influence at all…