Practically speaking, my career started in the news business. My first real technical job was working on web sites for Auburn University Libraries, but from there, I got into open source, using and working on Django. That lead to working for a small paper in Naples, FL, and then, the Washington Post. I think about my time at the Post a lot, even more so here recently.
So many things were happening then. My youngest daughter was born right as I joined the Post. I’ll never forget the month and year of starting there! It was October 2006. Not long after that came the iPhone. Then, social media. I was working on what I think we called the “Special Projects” team, so I was helping build stuff for all of that.
We were trying to figure out mobile web sites then. This was before iOS apps. We were also trying to figure out integration with social media. I spent a week in California at Facebook and actually sat in a conference room with Mark Zuckerberg as he explained to us their new F8 platform launch. F8 is what they were calling their platform for embedded integrations. Think little pieces of the Washington Post users and data, running on Facebook’s web site. We were going to build one of those first embedded apps. All of this was super exciting.
Looking back now, some of it has aged well, and other parts, not so much.
My daughter, she clearly aged well. She’s 19 and deep into her first year in college. The iPhone, likwise. Clearly, this is an essential device for so many people. The mobile web is the only web for a lot of folks. Social media, on the other hand, is a mixed bag.
I can remember being really excited about Facebook and Twitter when I first joined those sites. It felt like we were building something completely new. There was all this talk of social graphs and connecting the world. News sites in particular couldn’t wait to figure it out. The newspaper business was in decline, and there was hope social would be a new source of attention and revenue for the business. I really can’t say enough about how uniformly excited people were about the possibilities then.
Then came 2016. Cambridge Analytica. Political polarization. Mental health issues. Anxiety. Anger. Isolation. The very thing that was meant to bring us all together has driven us apart. Just two days ago, people were celebrating as Facebook and YouTube were held accountable in the courts here in the US. News and media once craved social media attention, and now we’re all focused on “direct to consumer,” trying to build our own relationship with our audiences. 2006 seems such a long time ago.
I think it’s too easy to dismiss social media as uniformly bad. There is real utility for keeping in touch with friends and family. Small businesses have options for reaching people that really can help a business grow and thrive. My older daughter is a hair stylist, and she went from 0 clients to an overbooked schedule in the matter of a few months, largely all thanks to her posts on social media. Maybe the bad outweighs the good, but it's not all bad. Either way, it's complex and clearly not the panacea we thought it would be in 2006.
I said up top that I’ve been thinking about all this a lot recently. I joined Warner Bros. Discovery to work on CNN last year. I’m back in the news and media industry again, it’s 2026, and what was old feels new again. I see a lot of similarities in that social media fervor to how people are thinking about and embracing AI today. It’s a little different. For one, it’s not all so uniformly positive here at the start. A lot of programmers and business people are excited about AI, but creatives and journalists are skeptical at best and fearful at worst. What happened with social media and big tech has left so many people jaded. Maybe even as a result of social media, we’re more polarized about any new development. But still, there’s something that feels similar.
Maybe it’s just me and my circumstances. The cable news business is in decline, the way newspapers were back in 2006. AI will almost certainly change how we get and share news, the same way social media did back then. The question is will it be a largely net positive like my daughter’s birth and the iPhone, or will it be something we’re left regretting but for a couple of pockets of promise.
Only time will tell. Let’s check in again in 2036 and see.