Weekly Links #25

Here is a weekly selection of important information bits, thoughtful opinion pieces and interesting analyses from the digital and technology world. Published every Thursday.

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• Funding The Web With Ads: This Outdated Model Has To Go
  
  Try to imagine an Internet without ad-financed business models. It is hard. Yet, the future might push us at least a bit closer to such a scenario. Also because of the increasing use of ad blockers.
• Why Technology Hasn’t Delivered More Democracy
  
  An important question and a couple of answers from experts.
• TTIP explained: The secretive US-EU treaty that undermines democracy
  
  If you keep hearing about TTIP but lack the knowledge about what it is, this article can help you. You probably also should read it if you hear about TTIP for the first time.
• Where Are We Headed?
  
  Thoughts about a question I ask myself often, too.
• In ‘year of Apple Pay’, many top retailers remain skeptical
  
  I’d love to see Apple Pay to catch on, but this does not sound too optimistic.
• What Twitter Can Be.
  
  After I read this long but really interesting suggestions by Chris Sacca, an early investor in Twitter and a major shareholder, I wondered why he is not the CEO of this company.
• The amusing case of tech libertarians
  
  A possible contradiction: Tech libertarians oppose socialistic endeavors, yet their ideas are based and depended on what others have built and provided to the public for free.
• Messaging App Jott Is Blowing Up Among Junior High And High Schoolers
  
  After Fire Chat which has been used during a couple of citizen protests, there is now another messaging app making use of the concept of mesh networks to connect smartphones with each other without the need for an Internet connection. Unlike Fire Chat, this one apparently is a rising star in and around schools.
• Eddy Cue talks music, but Twitter can’t stop talking about his shirt
  
  I appologize for linking to such a junk-food-type article. But the presentation of Apple Music was seriously hard to watch. And Eddy Cue came across like an aging father who finds the latest toy of his teenage kids and later tries to sell the idea to his similarly aged friends. The tweets commenting his awkward appearance entertained me a lot, though.
• Businesses are like ants
  
  Fascinating and helpful analogy.
• Merkel urges Germans to put aside fear of big data
  
  A suprising move but it shows how concerns about the future of Germany’s notoriously change-averse and technophobic culture are growing even among the top politicians (who themselves have showed no interested so far in changing their attitudes)
• Everything You Thought You Knew About Love Is Wrong
  
  About love in the age of digital technology.
• How I killed app sales by going freemium
  
  Insightful experiment.