A substantial portion of this article examines the idea of chasing trends. SEO and SMO, in particular, are targeted as scapegoats. To an extent, that's a fair assessment - if news media cover a particular topic only because it's trending on search or social, it doesn't necessarily lead to quality content. The better route is to cover the topics of your own expertise and view search and social as tools for getting your content to an audience interested in it. The "O" in SEO and SMO stands for optimization, not game-the-system.

• Why so many media companies are on the brink of disaster

I often wish I could abandon Facebook altogether. I find Twitter extremely useful for work, but I rarely use it outside the office. Instagram is littered with junk posts (personally, I consider anything that isn't a photo you shot yourself to be spam), and I can't keep up with their stories vs. Snapchat's.

Social media has become a mostly joyless pastime that we turn to out of habit with the hope that maybe, just maybe, we'll stumble across something interesting.

As I've argued for years, Facebook's failure is that your friends aren't interesting. However, on the platforms where we follow people based on interest rather than acquaintance, social media works.

• The End of the Social Era Can't Come Soon Enough