Should we show a page view count on an article site?

We run a site which publishes articles, similar to buzzfeed in a lot of ways. The original site had a lot of features and some fairly old templates which needed redeveloping, along with new branding. Part of this was figuring what features were not required anymore and instead introducing functionality which was useful to our vistors. One of those components to be replaced, was the page view count.

For me, this was an obvious change. What publishers out there have a view count on their articles? It seemed to me that the view count isn't actually something vistors needed. Instead we replaced it with social share counts and also a favourite button, which could then later be hooked into a favourite article list for registered users.

The question has been raised several times since, is why did we remove the view count? Based on the conjecture, that it's useful for our visitors.

So should we show it? Is there any examples of this been useful for vistors? Why is it useful?

I'm basically struggling to find an examples of this, or any evidence. Would be great to get your opinions.

Unfortunatly, we never got the chance to do any user testing before going live, or in the design phase. I'm now looking to do user testing in InVision and a basic questionnaires, which will decide the development roadmap going forward. We're going to do this both internally, and with an external group. This will give me a lot of answers to what people need and want. Vistors been my primary focus, not the business!

This question has been answered previously to some extent, but I think I'm asking it in a slightly different way.

Thanks in advance!