The number of sessions on consumer behaviour were a pleasant surprise at SXSW. Perhaps more engrossing for me though, as the head of a digital network, was the way in which the festival furthered debate around viral content.
Despite the leaps and bounds in digital over the past decade, it's an area that's still awash with questions: how you define viral content? How do you create it without pandering to the lowest common denominator?
One man to stir the debate was Eli Pariser, the founder of Upworthy, a fast-growing news site that aggregates content in relation to its virality. "Increasingly people are logging onto Twitter and Facebook, and they're expecting an algorithm to surface the most important stuff to them," Pariser said. So the smart publishers are no longer measuring page views but "attention minutes".
It means you have Kim Kardashian and Barack Obama fighting an even fight for space on the homepage – but is that necessarily a good thing? And whose right is it to decide that? From Pariser's perspective, Upworthy considers three things – satisfaction, importance and quality. He says: "The challenge is to listen thoughtfully to the critique that's smart … and with the stuff that's dumb, just be happy that we're reaching enough people that it matters."
Already in its short existence Upworthy has been both celebrated and vilified for its viral approach. But its rise marks a significant shift in traditional broadcasting. Whereas last year at SXSW we had Jonah Peretti, founder of pioneering viral site Buzzfeed, describing his offering as targeting the "bored in a queue" user, Upworthy believes its content provides something more meaningful. A happy-medium between something that's in the public interest and of interest to the public.
But as the website's readership figures already begin to level off, whether this approach remains relevant is still to be seen. Because the content and manner in which something goes viral – whether it's an advertising campaign, amateur film or news story – is already going to be quite different for the next generation, as youth researcher Danah Boyd points out.
In a fascinating discussion on the social lives of networked teens, Boyd looked at teenager's sharing habits and produced some eye-opening results. When it comes to sharing viral content online, it's now a two-way digital street. Teens expect a social exchange. If they are putting themselves out there and lending their recommendation to something, they expect others to do the same. It will be interesting to see how this changes the way we term a social media influencer in the future.
Meanwhile, while viral content of old could still make a lasting impression online, often still accumulating hits much further down the line (Charlie bit my finger is now on 674m views and counting), teens are now sharing content in a much less permanent way.
Driven by the likes of Snapchat, teens are excited about treating media differently. They enjoy sharing something viral for a short period of time before quickly moving on to the next hot trend or platform – usually something their parents aren't yet using. It has a risk to it that they like. See also the phenomenon of anonymous social media sites such as Whisper – which is all about the deliciousness of secrets.
This means that the rules of what does and doesn't go viral gets adapted accordingly.
But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, what about the multimillion-dollar question – just how do you define when something goes viral? Is it when it reaches 1m views? When it starts being shared without marketing spend behind it? When a broadcaster declares it as such? Despite numerous panels discussing this very subject, from the sharpest journalistic minds to the viral gurus at RSA Films, still no one could agree on one firm answer. I guess there are some things even SXSW can't solve.
Debbie Klein is chief executive at Engine.
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