1. A system for assigning a value to an electronic communications action, comprising: a computer system having one or more processor units and non-transitory computer-readable medium in communication with the one or more processor unit, said medium having one or more computer programs stored thereon including a set of instructions that, when executed by one or more processor units, cause the one or more processor units to perform the steps of monitoring at least one electronic communication network for at least one predetermined electronic transmission and validating at least one of the detected electronic transmissions; one or more vending or gaming machine, each coupled with the computer system and adapted to issue a machine credit representing one of a plurality of value amounts in response to a electronic command from the computer system; wherein the step of monitoring includes detecting electronic transmission performed by a remote electronic device on the at least one network and said at least one predetermined electronic transmissions are embodied as a qualifying social action, defined by a published electronic message containing one or more preset match phrases; wherein each qualifying social action has been associated with at least one of the one or more vending or gaming machines; wherein the step of validating includes at least associating the electronic transmission with a unique user account, assigning a value amount to the electronic transmission which relates to a social media influence measurement of the associated user account, and identifying at least one of the one or more vending or gaming machines which has been associated with the detected qualifying social action; and wherein said one or more processor units are configured to additionally perform the step of commanding the at least one of the one or more vending or gaming machines identified in the step of validating to issue machine credit representing the assigned value amount and the steps of monitoring and validating are performed in a location distinct from the one or more vending or gaming machines.