Are we focusing on the right metrics? ~via Nick Cicero
Thought provoking post via the always insightful and thought-provoking Nick Cicero. Thanks for sharing Nick.
What do you all think? Hmmm… /Ted
Recently Adam Mosseri announced view counts in threads. This sparks a big question: Are we focusing on the right metrics? Let's unpack this. 👇
Taylor Lorenz observed it in action and commented in her thread about how public view counts can be a slippery slope for social media. "They lead people to optimize for views, and a culture focused on views often ends up in a race to the bottom."
Mosseri's position surprises me: "View counts are interesting as I think if we were launching Instagram or Facebook today, we would probably include them. They give people a better sense of their reach, and generally, more feedback is a good thing." At the same time, Meta famously gave users the ability to hide likes and comments to “depressurize Instagram to make it less of a competition…”
Public view counts are like those early web hit counters – simple and visible, but are they meaningful?
My company, Delmondo (acquired by Conviva), was one of the first Facebook Measurement Partners with access to measure public view counts across FB and IG for creators, brands, sports teams, media companies so, I thought I’d share my thoughts from my experience:
1. Public view counts don’t tell content creators about the context of their viewers - While it's great to know my post got a million views, do I even know where the viewers are coming from? Are they coming to my page, seeing me in the feed, sharing with friends, reposting? Did the algorithm favor the keywords I used in that post? Are they my followers, or are they new people?
2. Public view counts don’t take into account time spent, the overlooked metric of resonance ⏳ - For videos, a public view doesn’t show if someone watched for seconds or hours. For non-video content, views don’t truly capture incremental reading time, engagement, or comment depth that a great post provides.
3. Public view counts don’t help content creators without tools to make sense of the data - When Meta wanted more creators to make videos, Delmondo had access to view counts on Instagram and Facebook as an Official Facebook Media Measurement Partner, acting as a trusted third-party for benchmarking and allowing creators/brands to compete on content for performance. That program no longer exists. They’ve also stopped supporting platforms like CrowdTangle critical for contextualization.
View counts are important. They help people get a sense of their reach. But they don’t always need to be public, and certainly, for non-video content, there’s no need for public metrics. Threads could have rolled out view counts privately to users in analytics dashboards, then adapted a public roll-out if needed.
As we navigate the evolving world of social media, it's time to ask ourselves: Are we measuring what truly matters? View counts tell a part of the story, but there’s so much more to engagement.
📣 I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think current metrics reflect true impact of content, or is it time for a change?
