Social Media Is Dead. Welcome to the Age of Interest Media.

History Loves Company  ·  Media & Strategy

Social media is dead. Not gone — dead. There’s a difference. It still exists. People still use it. But it no longer works the way it used to, and the brands still optimizing for it are optimizing for a game that ended.

What replaced it is interest media. Content built around specific, durable interests — not trends, not virality, not the algorithm’s appetite for outrage — but the things people actually care about and come back to repeatedly. Michigan history. Historic preservation. The buildings that shaped this state. The stories behind the objects on the floor of The Foundry.

That’s what History Loves Company has always been. Not a social media brand. An interest media brand. The YouTube channel, the newsletter, the blog, The Foundry itself — all of it is built around a specific interest that a specific audience cares about deeply.

What Interest Media Looks Like

Interest media is not about reach. It’s about depth. A YouTube video about Michigan Central Station that gets 50,000 views from people who genuinely care about Detroit architecture is worth more than a viral post that gets 500,000 impressions from people who will never think about it again.

The audience that finds HLC through a documentary about the Riker Building is the same audience that walks into The Foundry. The same audience that buys an Artifact Print of the Phoenix Center during demolition. The same audience that consigns their grandmother’s vintage furniture because they trust us to find it the right home.

That’s not a social media strategy. That’s a community built around a shared interest in place, history, and the things worth keeping.

How to Follow Along

If you’re here, you’re already part of the interest media ecosystem HLC is building. Here’s how to go deeper.

Chris Hubel is the founder of History Loves Company and The Foundry in downtown Pontiac, Michigan.