Flattr is "failing" (failing as in, failing to gain substantial traction) because of lack of users. Notch (of Minecraft fame) used Flattr for a long time on his blog and he removed it because he made so very little off it, even though he has a very high traffic blog.
They shot themselves in the foot when they launched the service: a "private beta". It was the most ridiculous idea ever, here is a service that NEEDS every user they can get vaguely interested to sign up and use it, and then when they have users interested (the initial launch "buzz") they say "nope sorry, it's a private beta, we'll send you an invite some time".
I used Flattr for a while and so little sites used it I just ended my subscription. I was lucky to get an invite too... they should have been trying to take everyone who WANTED to use the service, instead they pushed them away.
In their defense, artificial scarcity can drive buzz for the product a lot, if done well. Also, a service that's not yet done can't afford to launch to the public, especially when there's money involved.
Rather than think about launching in beta vs launching publicly, think about launching in beta vs launching much later. Which is the better choice?
In the case of Flattr? The latter would have been much more beneficial for them. I wanted to sign up to give them my money, to improve the value of their service (the value for content providers is the amount of users) and I had to "apply" and wait for it. Everything about that is wrong for Flattr.
So it would be better for flattr if you weren't even aware of their existence, rather than know about them and be unable to sign up? I don't believe that...
I think they fit more into the Google Wave category than say the gmail. With gmail everyone could instantly gain value from having an account, with wave, people fired it up, had a quick look around and noticing none of their friends were there to talk to forgot about it.
Hmm, that sounds like it might have some potential. I'm envisioning a setup where the first upvote is free, but you can get a second one by spending a quarter (or whatever amount of money) that gets shared with the site owner.
Flattr could create a bookmarklet to flattr any webpage. Then if enough people have done so for a given domain they can contact the owner saying "Hey, you have 5$ to collect at flattr, why not sign-up?". This is basically what paypal does, allowing you to send money to anyone with an e-mail address even if they're not yet registered.
I went back and forth with someone at flattr like 8 times saying this. At the end of the day that person just broke down and told me that it was a deeply political issue and the sides were divided on it.
Oh and I should say that I was coming up with solutions left right and center for the "problems" associated with it. Each of the problems was more like a starting point to a great solution than a fundamental problem. (Eg. "what if 1m sites have less than 2 cents even after months?" "Auto lottery that shit" or "what if we can't contact the person?" "Same solution to someone signing up for flattr and getting hit by a bus. You can never rely on getting in touch with a person set reasonable limits and state them publically" etc, etc, etc)
There might be legal issues with collecting money on another entity's behalf (while saying you're collecting it for them) without their consent. I'm not a lawyer and it's probably not a show-stopper, but it might involve more hoops to jump through.
TipTheWeb ( http://tiptheweb.org/ ) lets you tip almost anything, as long as it is free to access. When a publisher claims their site, they'll find the tips waiting for them. (If tips go unclaimed for a really long time, they get returned to the tipper's account).
exactly. or going another step... i'll set aside some $ amt to give each money, then I want to point flattr to my instapaper feed and have them figure out each site's split of my monthly largess.
I would not sign up as the service stands now because the whole thing requires too much daily thought from me.
I hear a lot of people saying that. Interesting, however, is that I, as European, don't even think twice about it[1]. My brain must be wired to look at the context primarily.
Why that is, I can only take a stab at: I guess we see a lot more from you guys on the other side of the pond than you see from us. :)
[1] Comma overload -- my English teacher would kill me.
I think the difference is that most Americans simply aren't exposed to various ways of writing dates, times, currencies, numbers, etc. on a regular basis.
Even within Germany, there's no consensus about where to put the Euro sign (before or after). Americans don't write times like 20:00 and say "eight" aloud. After several years in Europe, I'm fairly adept at accepting all inputs.
Your comment inspired this thought: Imagine a Firefox extension or Greasemonkey script that localizes web pages: converts dates, times, currencies, separators to the user's preference. :)
Google Chrome will translate web page languages, which is a much more difficult problem.
Oops. I normally try to use the correct separator. I don't know why I didn't this time. Strange how the brain works sometimes, I remember typing a comma, deleting it and thinking "No, I have to use the other separator on HN."
Here are two big reasons why not everyone has a Flattr button on ther website yet:
- To put the button on your website you have to also be a paying Flattr user (pay a minimum of €2/month).
- You are forced to pay a hefty 10% cut of everything you earn to Flattr. Also, you further have to pay all PayPal fees (those are not included in the 10% Flattr cut). And possibly taxes depending on where you live.
TipTheWeb ( http://tiptheweb.org/ ) is a new (non-profit!) service that just came out of private beta a few months ago- it has no fees for tippers or publishers, and passes 100% of claimed tips to web publishers via monthly awards. And TipTheWeb doesn’t require a subscription or any kind of ongoing commitment. Both flattr and Readability take big cuts of the money before it gets to publishers. In addition to working with popular publishing platforms and independent websites, TipTheWeb allows multi-contributor sites, like multi-author blogs, to add simple metadata to their pages so that tips can go directly to the authors of the content being tipped.
Well, I wouldn't call it a "market", exactly. But people spend money on plenty of things they don't need to. And if no one supports all the great stuff people work on and put up for free on the Web, then we'll just get more and more obnoxious advertisements and more crazy schemes from big businesses.
At TipTheWeb (see my comments above), we think that by supporting the publishers of the stuff you like online, you're helping to make the Web a place that's more valuable to you. We all want more of the good stuff and less of the crap. If you tip a blog post that you like 10 cents, then not only does the publisher of that blog make a little money, but they also get some information about which of the stuff they write is valuable to their readers. This is a feedback loop that's missing from advertisement-driven publishing, where they get the ad impression regardless of whether you like the content.
Flattr would work better if it did more stuff. For example, if there was an API allowing any Flattr user to pay an amount into any other Flattr user's account. This would probably involve issues with banking regulations, however.
I must admit I don't 'get' flattr - why would you ever signup if you weren't also trying to get paid? Surely Flattr's biggest problem is that they don't have users who want to freely donate, just users who want to get paid. It's a crap pyramid scheme. Or like a trade show, when the only people there are all salesmen, with no customers.
Can I disable/inactivate my account?
- No. As long as there's money in your means
account, these will be used each month. When they
run out your account will be deactived until
you add more funds.
I signed up thinking Flattr was a way for people to pay me who hate paypal. It turns out it's not anything like that, at all. But there's no way to immediately get off Flattr and close my account, and each month they've been emailing me garbage I don't want.
> I signed up thinking Flattr was a way for people to pay me who hate paypal.
Maybe Flattr should do that as well. For example they could extend the service so that you could put a button on your website which when someone presses it, it pays a fixed amount from their website to yours, which could be used as an easy-to-use micropayment scheme allowing people to pay for content.
Yes, that would be nice, instead of the current scheme, where you sign up, have to put money down, and then get reminded monthly that you should go spread that money around. I signed up to get paid, not pay.
I was wrong about this; further along in the FAQ there's an entry about "deleting" the account. I stopped reading after the "disable" question, not realizing there was a difference.
Site owners have to sign up for the service before participating. That barrier should be removed.
For example, you should be able to flattr any URL, not just web sites that have opted in. Here's how it would work: if you see a site that you wish to give money to, you would flattr the URL with a promise of money, but not real money. You would do this on flattr.com. The owner of the URL will go to flattr.com and see that they have $89.13 in "flattry" waiting for them if they sign up. At that point, the site owner has incentive to sign up and collect the money. Once the site owner has signed up, the users are notified that they need to pay (or payment is taken automatically).
This way, users don't have to wait for a site to add the flattr button and site owners will have much more incentive to sign up once they see the money waiting for them.
Tips identify content just by URL de-coupling content attribution from the authors claiming their tips. This also us to work for tipping content on YouTube, Flickr, and GitHub, etc. without requiring the site to be directly integrated with TipTheWeb.
Thanks for this. I tried Flattr but it seemed A) too barren and B) too Euro-centric for me. TTW seems like an awesome service, I've already made $4. =)
Handling money requires a stable and trusted service which is why it would have been a bad idea not having a closed beta to test it out properly before released. The problem with handling money is that there is a lot of legal issues around it.
@cabalamat there is already an API that community has used to create a lot of cool stuff with: https://flattr.com/support/plugins Hoping to see many more though so if you have good ideas feel free to hack away:) Donating specific sums can already be done to other Flattr users via their profile page.
I do it for the submitter on my site. I understand why some might think it is controversial, however. Actually, it might be best to keep it to comments only. -That's user created content. I'm going to consider that for my site. Thanks.
I will use Flattr when there are no service fees. After all, the developers/owners, who also just happen to run the pirate bay, feel that everything should be free and "shared, just like when we were children".
Why do they need to charge 10% service fees if they want a "free" society?
I think that the Contenture/Readability model is probably the most likely to succeed. I'm biased, of course, having dreamt up the same basic model circa 2008.
When I learned about Kachingle (similar model with an opt-in step), I pretty much threw a wobbly and gave up on the idea. But I've taken from Facebook the idea that first to market doesn't always win, even if they have what seems like insurmountable network value. The race is not always to the swift ...
In any case, I've turned some of my design work into the basis of an honours project, so if all else fails I'll have an upgraded degree and something cool to talk about in interviews.
That's cool. My thesis was on a project very similar to flattr - voluntary payments (not donations). This was in 2006/07, a few months before flattr opened for beta users, and was really existed to see it happen.
You donate blood and you donate to a charity. You pay for music and you pay for books. When you donate you don't expect to get something back in return. When you pay you expect something back.
Even though no one is forcing you to give in either case the mental model is a quite different. For example, as a musician I want people to pay me because they enjoy my music not because they feel that I need the money. As a listener I will pay someone if I enjoy their music - I don't really care about the financial status of the musician.
They shot themselves in the foot when they launched the service: a "private beta". It was the most ridiculous idea ever, here is a service that NEEDS every user they can get vaguely interested to sign up and use it, and then when they have users interested (the initial launch "buzz") they say "nope sorry, it's a private beta, we'll send you an invite some time".
I used Flattr for a while and so little sites used it I just ended my subscription. I was lucky to get an invite too... they should have been trying to take everyone who WANTED to use the service, instead they pushed them away.