Depending on which timezone you found yourself, I managed to get this note out before midnight Friday and thus keep with my goal of regular publishing.
Also, I like the way that I can ramble here about something without the burden of having to sell something or push a subscription. Just old-school blogging. I miss that.
I’m intrigued by how Matt Mullenweg, founder/CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, treats his own blog/newsletter. If he has a thought, he just writes it up and sends it out. Almost like a personal feed of notes.
Speaking of feeds, the feed is dead, according to the head of Instagram. At least in the context of Instagram. That’s what Mosseri claims in his essay published on Instagram; to a feed (!) regarding Instagram (but maybe he meant the feed in general).
I’ve been re-reading his essay. But not the one published on Instagram, that’s a shorter version. He published the whole thing on Threads (yes, you can publish longform content there as well).
Mosseri warns of several shifts in the wider media ecosystem. Central to all of them is authenticity.
Authenticity is fast becoming a scarce resource, which will in turn drive more demand for creator content, not less. The creators who succeed will be those who figure out how to maintain their authenticity whether or not they adopt new technologies. That’s harder now—not easier—because everyone can simulate authenticity. The bar is going to shift from “can you create?” to “can you make something that only you could create?” That’s the new gate.
The core idea of the essay is that AI is moving fast and changing user behaviour. It’s interesting to see how this is the same thing with which media makers are grappling as well.
In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity—by being real, transparent, and consistent—will stand out.
Again, really intriguing how this resonates with some of the findings in news creator research done last year by the Reuters Institute.
Last week I wrote that I’ve been watching three trends in 2025: the rise of AI and news creators and the dominance of YouTube.
I suspect these will be dominant in 2026.
The realness factor will become one of the top topics and will connect all three mentioned above.
That will come as the feeds are flooded more and more with synthetic content.
I forgot where I read it, probably on LinkedIn, but someone mentioned how this shift might bring back a need for something physical. And not just in terms of media.
I saw it this week when a colleague created a one-pager of a product, but the reaction to the printed-out version (I wanted to see how it looked on paper) was so much stronger from the others that it made me think.
Either I’m getting old and the world is upside down, because wherever I worked, I was the one telling everyone to double down on digital and forget the paper.
Am I now saying the tides have turned? 😶🤷♂️
