Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see”.

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

• Never trust a corporation to do a library’s job – The Message. “Andy Baio takes Google to task for having lost its mojo when it comes to organizing the world’s information — even the information that isn’t lucrative. Writing about archive.org‘s recent push to make ancient video games playable, he says, ‘this software emulation project feels, to me, like the kind of thing Google would have tried in 2003. Big, bold, technically challenging, and for the greater good.'” (Alistair for Hugh).
• How Product Hunt Helped Me Grow A List Of 12,989,483,288+ Valuable Subscribers And Generate 220k+ In Sales In Less Than 20 Minutes Without Having To Write A Single Line Of Code And Also Taught Me These 5+ Startup Lessons From My Mistakes About Being A Product Manager in 2016 on Meerkat - Matt Sydeworks. “With a title like that, who needs a description? Sadly, this sounds too much like actual blogs. #sarcasm.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• R.I.P. California (1850-2016): What We’ll Lose And Learn From The World’s First Major Water Collapse – Feel Guide. “What happens when California’s water supply collapses? (in 2016!?).” (Hugh for Alistair).
• Australian comedian perfectly sums up why other countries think US gun laws are crazy – Vox. “US gun debate, as seen through the eyes of the rest of the world.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• The Folly of the Unicorns – Pacific Standard. “What is a company really worth? Are valuations completely out of control? Is this a bubble? If this past year is any indication, we are always going to be asking these questions, and the answers don’t really matter. Companies getting money on valuation is super-similar to bands that get signed to a major record label (back when that actually meant something). I don’t think companies are getting valuations based on anything other than hardcore gambling. The people/corporations handing out the money had a few wins in the past and they’re sprinkling this money everywhere in the hopes to have a few more. It’s a strange system, but it is the system we have been using for a long time. Go and hug a unicorn, will you?” (Mitch for Alistair).
• The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising – Nieman Lab. “Our media landscape would be looking very different if editors and publishers had come to the realizations in this article about a decade ago. The fundamental challenge to media and publishing models is that advertising is no longer based on a scarcity model. It is abundant… and now, the robots are starting to take over. Knowing what your product is, optimizing it and figuring out a real revenue stream (one, where advertising compliments it) will be the nature of a successful media organization going forward. This is a great read.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.