Flattr
= a system for social micro-donations to support online creative work
URL = http://flattr.com/
Description
1. Peter Sunde:
“Users who join the site can use it to discover interesting articles, great music and useful software, like on the aforementioned social discovery sites. If they see something they like they can give it a thumbs up, which is nothing new either.
The innovative part is that users of Flattr set a monthly budget they are willing to donate each month to the content they like. This can be as low as $2, or whatever the user is willing to share. At the end of the month the money is shared between the creators of the content they liked, who are all Flattr users as well.
In other words, Flattr allows consumers to flatter content producers for a flat-rate fee, and offers a revenue stream to those who create and share content.
The idea behind Flattr is innovative, but for the service to be a success the user base has to be significant. If Sunde and friends succeed in that they have an ideal solution to pay off the people who share their work for free.” (http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/flattr-introduces-voluntary-social-micropayments/2010/02/13)
2. Flattr's about pages:
" Flattr was founded to help people share money, not just content. Before Flattr, the only reasonable way to donate has been to use Paypal or other systems to send money to people. The threshold for this is quite high. People would just ignore the option to send donations if it wasn't for a really important cause. Sending just a small sum has always been a pain in the ass. Who would ever even login to a payment system just to donate €0.01? And €10 was just too high for just one blog entry we liked...
Flattr solves this issue. When you're registered to flattr, you pay a small monthly fee. You set the amount yourself. At the end of the month, that fee is divided between all the things you flattered. You're always logged in to the account. That means that giving someone some flattr-love is just a button away. And you should! Clicking one more button doesn't add to your fee, it just divides the fee between more people! Flattr tries to encourage people to share. Not only pieces of content, but also some money to support the people who created them. With love!
Flattr has no different user types. We know that everybody that create also uses other content. And vice versa. We make no difference between people.
Flattr can be used as a complement to accepting donations. Or to having advertising on your blog. Or to help getting small donations you never get for your open source software. " (http://flattr.com/about)
3. Wikipedia:
"Flattr is a microdonation system that launched in March 2010 on an invite-only basis[1] and then opened to the public on 12 August of the same year.
Flattr is a project started by Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson. Users are able to pay a small amount every month (minimum 2 euros) and then click Flattr buttons on sites to share the money they paid among those sites, comparable to an Internet tip jar. (The word "flattr" is used as a verb, to indicate payments through the Flattr system-so when a user clicks a Flattr button and they are logged in to the Flattr site, they are said to be "flattring" the page they are on.) Sunde said, "We want to encourage people to share money as well as content."
In the beginning of the service Flattr itself takes 10% of all the users monthly flatrate, although this fee may be reduced at a later date if the economics permit it.
In December 2010 Flattr received large-scale attention when it was tweeted to be a method of donating money to WikiLeaks, which had recently been cutoff by Paypal, Visa, and Mastercard.
On 28 April 2011 Flattr announced by email that they won't require users to flattr others anymore before they can be flattrd starting from 1 May 2011." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr)
Comment
Jeremie Zimmerman:
"Flattr is *not* (in my view at least) micropayments.
When you click "flattr this" you had a micro-sum to a total... this total can then be transfered somewhere... So it's not about micro-payments, just micro-addition to some payment."
Status
- Video: Peter Sunde on Flatt, one year after, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPy5i7Pxaeo (2/2011)
More Information
- This is Flattr, introduction video, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zrMlEEWBgY
- Rebel Frattr Alliance, a series, starting here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG7sOHzyWVM