Influencing on the Web

So I was reading today about Fast Company’s The Influence Project:
In roughly 24 hours, nearly 6,000 people have registered to participate in an experiment we started called The Influence Project. It’s been written about by TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, The New York Times and a score of personal blogs. While it hasn’t taken off the way as quickly as the David After Dentist or Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Rainbow videos, it’s off to a good enough start to bust our servers (briefly). But like anything that gains traction on the web, the reactions have been mixed, ranging from the vitriolic to the pretty damn amusing.
You can read more about it here.  The basic idea, though, is to see how much influence you have on your virtual world.  Each participant is given a unique link (here’s mine–feel free to click!) The more people who click on it, especially if they then sign up for links of their own, the more influence you are presumed to have.  The picture you upload when you register grows with each person whom you have influenced.  All the pictures will be printed in the November issue of the company’s magazine (albeit some of them quite tiny) which will also name the most influential person on the Internet.
In a way it reminds me of counting to see who got the most valentines back in fourth grade.  But it IS interesting.  It’s what we are doing all the time online anyway, when we post links on Facebook or check our retweets on Twitter.  What this will do is demonstrate the effect graphically.  Any thoughts?