2025 Hindsight: Pretty early perhaps to be bemoaning the demise of the ‘publications formerly known as print newspapers’, and a bit underdeveloped, but again, not bad in pointing to a worrying thing.

I was thinking of my Canadian cousin this morning, and wondering guiltily if she would like her dead father’s stamp albums that are still on a shelf in my living room.

Which of course reminded me why Facebook is one of the most powerful media forces on the planet.

Through sure-footed strategy they survived the near-death experience of the switch to mobile, to come back even stronger as the primary stream of the modern Internet.

Today they have a huge chunk of media time, cushioned from ad-blocking inside an app (yes, I know about VPN blockers but only freaks like me use them), enriched with an unparalleled set of signals of who I am and what I care about that advertisers may borrow (but never have, of course).

And if context matters in media, what better context than news from my nearest and dearest?

Crumbs from Facebook’s table of attention are keeping various news sources alive. I was going to call them destinations, but of course that is exactly what they aren’t any more; comatose websites bleeping away on the life support administered by a benignly indifferent (and occasionally merciless) algorithm.

If Google is an enthusiastic puppy bounding back with a stick in an endless, slobbering game of fetch, Facebook is a cat that knows when to curl up on a lap to get the loves. Google gets money helping people do what they were going to do anyway. Facebook gets money for creating demand.

But of course Facebook gets its attention from guilt. Which is where the stamp albums come in.

It is a commonplace that the most successful products overcome some sort of friction; some problem, some pain point in human life.

When the right product or service comes along, there is a sense of a click, a fit, a rightness. And usually a concomitant exchange of value.

But, these pain points are not always easy to detect. Often people only know it when someone soothes it for them. But usually it is obvious afterwards.