The New York Times’ R&D team recently introduced “Project Cascade”. A new tool that visualizes the life of a news article in the Social Web. “Project Cascade” can track how stories spread on Twitter and allows for precise analysis of the structures which underly sharing activity on the web: Who is sharing what, when, why and how?

Here is how it works:

Currently it’s largely based on twitter’s well-structured data, but perhaps it could be easily expanded to other social media channels too?

The NY Times writes on the Project’s Website:

This first-of-its-kind tool links browsing behavior on a site to sharing activity to construct a detailed picture of how information propagates through the social media space.

While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared.

This raises the intriguing question: May these insights affect editorial decisions or at least affect the packaging of stories and the way media presents them online? Will be exciting to see.