I feel flattred
by m64 on Feb.15, 2010, under Possibilities
That’s probably not very hot news, but Peter Sunde, one of the creator of The Pirate Bay, is creating something called flattr. The name is obviously a portmanteau of flatter and flat rate. It is a “social micropayments” system in which consumer can pay a monthly flat rate (probably of his own choice) and have the system distribute this money among musicians, podcasters, bloggers, programmers and other content creators of his choice – possibly even game makers.
The system is very simple and this might just be its strength. Low flat fee makes joining the service a simple and possibly spontaneous decision. I hope that when faced with a question “is supporting the Internet creators, whose works I enjoy, worth drinking <a few drinks of your choice> a month less” at least some people will answer “yes”. I know this was the logic I used when I signed up for monthly donations to the Amnesty International a few years ago. The other end of the system is also beautifully simple – you just click the “flattr” button when you think something is worthy of your money. You don’t have to make any substantial financial decisions, as your monthly rate does not change, you only decide into how many parts you want to divide it (that is if you care).
Obviously there are many details to be handled – avoiding frauds, legal issues, the exact way the money is going to be shared or how to nudge people into making their monthly contributions high enough. But nonetheless the idea looks very promising. Once it goes out of the beta and is available in Poland, I will surely be one of the first subscribers – after all such a noble cause is worth drinking one bottle of wine a month less.
February 17th, 2010 on 3:41 pm
Now that’s interesting. I can imagine it being used all over the net in the same way Digg and such are used. Liked an article? Support the author with a click of a button. And the simplicity means it could potentially catch on, creating a critical mass of sorts. I mean, $10 is not much, but $10 times two hundred million people is a fortune.
Of course, I can also imagine it being abused by business entities as a revenue stream, because who said the button under the article needs to be linked to the author’s account, rather than the site’s? Also, the spontaneousness of a decision to support something means that populist content would probably get a boost. No monies for tl;dr.
February 18th, 2010 on 10:56 am
Oh, I haven’t noticed the problem with content hijacking. I guess it could be partially remedied with a small dialog saying “you are about to flattr, are you sure this is the author?”. This would force the eventual hijacker to remove copyright notices from content which is illegal.
As for the tl;drs, I remember some study done by the Washington Post or an other newspaper with an online version, which concluded that the long, substantial articles were the most likely to be recommended to the social bookmarking sites.
February 20th, 2010 on 5:03 pm
Interesting concept indeed! I’ll keep an eye on it and see how it develops once it hits gold!