This morning’s Observer column.

Here’s an idea for distressed newspaper editors: a regular feature entitled “Forthcoming Divorces”. Source material could be observations of squabbling couples in restaurants and supermarkets, comments written on Facebook walls, tagging of embarrassing photographs on Flickr, etc. And the feature could be surrounded by tasteful advertisements placed by legal firms specialising in matrimonial destruction, dating agencies, private detectives, house-clearance firms and purveyors of Viagra.

Those of us who watch the technology business do this kind of thing all the time. For years, for example, we’ve had our eye on a glamorous showbiz couple named Mr and Mrs AOL-Time Warner…