The key thing here is that if you ask a Harvard professor, with, say, 200 publications, how many downloads she got in the last 30 days, typically she will have no idea. The web is where most scientific research is being read and consumed, but scientists don't have easy ways of tracking metrics around their online influence. This dashboard is trying to change that.
The dashboard been in beta for a few months, and many users have written in saying that they are taking screenshots of the graphs, and are including them with their tenure track applications. Hiring and grant committees are increasingly keen to understand the broad impact of research they fund, ideally through a variety of different metrics: journal titles (which journal you got published in), citation counts, and now, increasingly, metrics that measure online influence, such as downloads. Something that surprised us a little was that it turns out that hiring and grant committees are increasingly interested in 'international reach'; i.e. they want to know that the research they fund as impact beyond the immediate region of the researcher. The dashboard helps a researcher to understand how international their audience is.
Previously a scientist only had an anecdotal of their audience: they would bump into people at a conference, and someone might say 'I read your paper', and them saying that produces a very warm glow (I have been there myself!). This dashboard is about putting numbers on your audience and reach, showing you which are your most popular papers. Some of our beta users also mentioned that the analytics are motivational: more people are interested in their work than they thought.