Upworthy, Buzzfeed, Gawker, and others, have received a lot of attention for the way they’re changing how people consume content, and how those changes can grow audience and make money.

That’s probably not the most interesting --- and important --- aspect of what they’re doing.

These companies are leading change that goes well beyond what they’re doing with content. They’re changing how we think about metrics and style.

Upworthy is championing a metric calls “attention minutes.” The theory (and I hope I don’t botch this): page views and minutes on page don’t adequately reflect how deeply users engage with content. You can find Upworthy’s very fine explanation here. It’s worth a read.

Buzzfeed has started an internet style guide that addresses words and phrases unique to the digital world. BuzzFeed’s move is brilliant. It has made clear that it has no intention of usurping the AP Style Guide or the Chicago Manual of Style --- the long time gold standards of media style books. Instead, it wants to supplement those guides with words, phrases and usage that might not be found in the more traditional books.

The Upworthy and BuzzFeed moves may seem separate, but they’re not. These new content companies are beginning the reshape the entire content business --- not just the words people read, but how these new digital publishers understand engagement of all sorts. The engagement space has been the purview of comScore, Google Analytics, Compete, and a bunch of others, and they all measure the tried-and-true page views, uniques, time spent metrics.

The true engagement has become to real gold standard, especially given all of the talk about the importance of shares and likes. The Verge has a real good look at Chartbeat’s take, which is: shares don’t necessarily equate to readership.

It’s another interesting debate in a fast-changing environment.

The move to ban Google Glass seems to be intensifying. This interesting blog post shows the efforts underway to make driving with or otherwise using Google Glass illegal in certain instances. Even though there is a really good debate on whether Glass will prove a distraction on the road or during work, I don’t believe this is a debate framed by safety issues.  

This, to me, is all about the fear of technology and how it might impact business.

This story by the Columbus (OH) Dispatch is the best example of what I mean. Some poor guy wearing Glass in a movie theater gets hauled out by Homeland Security because someone thought he might be making a bootleg copy of a movie.  (Lets forget about the logic behind that one. Heads and bodies shake, so you’d have to sit as still as a cardboard cutout just to, maybe, make a half-way awful bootleg copy. Not exactly a way to get your customers coming back for more).

Some businesses have also talked of banning Glass in the workplace, because no one wants an employee taping, let’s say, a contentious discussion with a manager or an HR representative. Not good, from the business standpoint.

And this isn’t going to be limited to Google. Samsung has announced its going to create a Glass clone, and if it sells, you can sure others will follow.

This reminds me a little of the ruckus caused by the advent of personal computing devices. Some were concerned that PCs in the workplace would encourage using the devices for personal use and distract from their jobs.  That didn’t happen; I don’t know anyone would advocate having a technology-free workplace.

Eventually, this will all work out. Glass may be banned from certain activities. I can see banning it while driving cars, or operating heavy equipment; it might be banned among some workers who have access to sensitive and proprietary documents. But for most other daily activities, I can’t see it. Really, if companies worked with Google, they could probably find ways to help advance their business, and raise productivity and profits.

Just like the PC.