Last Friday marked the conclusion of the annual Digital Content NewFronts in New York City, a two-week cluster . . . fiesta of Internet media executives, digital content strategists, stars of the (touch)screen, advertisers, and absolutely nobody else because it’s pretty much a trade show for hashtags and it was gorgeous out.
If the notion of “NewFronts’’ carries a faint echo of the more established media/advertiser monster truck rally of television’s annual Upfronts (where each May we keep up with various Kardashians, learn the name of the new “CSI’’ baby, and receive key details of the forthcoming TV season), they’re meant to. While nobody in all of digital media seems to have quite figured out how to match the revenues of traditional television, one-upping the hypecraft of the Upfronts — which somehow convey an air of industry stability even as they pan for ad cash — is easy.
Thus the NewFronts were a cavalcade of parties (with gaggy names like BrandCast) and Next Big Things in online media (Lightning round: Facebook 360! Facebook Live! Virtual reality! Snapchat! Fullscreen! Playboy! More Ellen!) Whether any of these new approaches to harnessing the power of the ongoing digital video boom live up to their purported Nextness or Bigness (by stoking the slowing growth of digital publishing) remains to be seen; but in the meantime, the promise of the future was floated atop dazzling, dizzying metrics — a proud celebration of quantity, with assurances of pending quality.
Video creator network Fullscreen boasted 600 million subscribers logging 5 billion video views. Refinery29’s audience consumes 4.2 million hours of video across Facebook and YouTube. YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki proclaimed that among its more than 1 billion viewers, the site reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds on mobile alone than the top 10 shows on TV put together. Snapchat and Facebook — who were only present in the form of other presenters’ chatter — are pulling 10 billion and 8 billion views per day, respectively. And Buzzfeed – whose eventually explosive live broadcast of an experiment involving a watermelon and hundreds of rubber bands recently drew a hotly contested 800,000 viewers — boasted 7 billion monthly views.
At a certain point, these Sagan-esque tabulations of unfathomable numbers start to outgrow comprehension (just ask advertisers). Typically the crystallizing effect of hard math serves to clarify things, but the criss-crossing bazillions and sliding scales of Internet metrics (not least among them, how many seconds really count as a view?) only feed the confusion about what true engagement on the Internet actually looks like — let alone how much it should go for.
This hunger for metrics isn’t strictly confined to advertisers and investors; as the clickers in this equation we’ve spent the last decade closely clocking our personal numbers. Most everyone I know who even lightly deals with social media keeps casual tabs on likes and comments, hearts and views, followers and friends. Metrics can make us feel heard and powerful, or forgotten and meek. Online, our experiences and the emotions that come with them are all tied up in analytics. Take a stat like “peak concurrent views,’’ newly offered by Facebook Live, which doesn’t disclose much of anything beyond the maximum number of people who were tuned in at once, but it feels like it means so much more. (Gawker’s Kevin Draper outright dubbed it a “vanity metric.’’)
Any time we double-tap to like, swipe to dismiss, click to share, tag to check-in, upvote or downvote, it’s in the subtle service of swaying some metric one way or the other. When you watch a concert through your phone, it doesn’t just bother me because you’re blocking my view; it’s because you’re prioritizing a metric above what it claims to measure. It’s like you’re paying attention on credit. And you’re tall.
There’s not much that makes me misty for my pre-Internet existence, but metrics do.
Most of my musical tastes, for instance, were built upon a foundational (and widely shared) confidence that the available charts represented nothing but models of what to resist. The emptiness of television endured and persisted despite or because of the 20,000 or so mysterious Nielsen families – it didn’t much matter. Whole subcultures in music, film, and literature all bloomed and died in proud defiance of square metric approval. There was a freedom to be found in not counting.
One of the greatest musical experiences of my life took place 20 years ago in the near-empty Upstairs of the Middle East in Cambridge. Through some staffing error, all 150 lbs. of me was stuck working security on what was likely a Monday night. There was me, the bartender, the sound guy, and a touring band from Austin called And You Will Know Us From the Trail of Dead.
They took the stage, calmly observed the empty room, and proceeded to completely destroy it. Their set came exploding off the stage in a storm of cables, tipped-over speakers, and squealing mikes set loose from their stands. The bartender and I just stood and watched, trading awed glances as the band stalked the room and the next hour shook itself apart. I had never seen such electrifying indifference.
Today, part of what makes that show so (albeit hazily) memorable was how hard the tree fell with no one to hear it. There was no way to share it, no method to mass-produce the experience, and no nagging need to prove, log, or register it anywhere, to anybody. Well, except maybe now, two decades later at the end of a column — as a scrap of anecdotal evidence humbly offered to suggest we weren’t always so compelled to play by the numbers. (Though, by all means, like and share if you agree.)
Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe .com. Follow him on Twitter @MBrodeur.
