

Social micropayment system by Peter Sunde of Pirate Bay fame goes beta - jonasvp
http://www.flattr.com

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ivankirigin
The cake is a lie. This is exactly like contenture, which shut down:
[http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/21/the-anti-ad-network-
content...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/21/the-anti-ad-network-contenture-
shuts-its-doors/)

God knows I think it would work in theory.

I really like what <http://kickstarter.com> is doing in this space. But
really, commerce is more important than this kind of P2P system. Easy payments
!= voluntary micropayments for free content.

edit: so contenture didn't involve explicit clicks like flattr, but I think
the analogy still sticks.

~~~
Artifex
I disagree in that this channels a (perhaps irrational) human behavior - the
desire to click a button just to be able to click it. Present a button to
someone in a clean layout without much clutter, and they are going to want to
press it. And given Sunde's pseudo-internet-rockstar-type status, this could
very well take off.

~~~
ivankirigin
People aren't compeled with the presence of a paypal button, to click it and
give money. That's because money is a cognitive barrier. People don't want to
spend anything unless they have to.

~~~
Artifex
Agreed, money typically is a cognitive barrier - but remember we're talking
micropayments, and the internet is a BIIIIG place. I think that works in favor
of overcoming that barrier.

And maybe, just maybe, the paypal button is out of date. Paypal buttons are
little more than a dressed-up hyperlink from 1996 that will take you to a form
with stuff to fill out and even more buttons to press (no novelty, redundancy,
paperwork, etc). It's also a solitary activity.

This is inviting in that you get to see a count displayed from people who have
already clicked it (much like the digg button), and invites you to participate
in that community. I think that community force is a very strong thing that
has yet to be tapped in to.

Who I see this working really well for at the Seth Godin-types, where they
have really developed a whole tribe of followers who hang on to their (and
truly benefit from) every word. These people will want to participate in their
online community, and this will be a very tangible and easy way for them to do
so.

~~~
ivankirigin
Actually Seth Godin explicitly doesn't want this kind of donation tool. His
blog is a tribe he cultivates to sell books.

Believe me, I know about this one.

Also, micropayments make it worse. You'll get the same dropoff for $0.05 as
you would for $5. Again, I know from data. Making the amounts small just means
you get less revenue.
<http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html>

~~~
patio11
I don't know if the data you are looking at are proprietary or not, but I
would sincerely love if there were published numbers that I could point people
to when I tell them what you are telling them right now.

~~~
ivankirigin
This is the data from <http://tipjoy.com> and no I haven no plans to open it
up.

------
patio11
I think this comes from Pirate Bay believing their own PR, that their users
are not thieves, they merely lack a good way to get money directly to the
artists for their works. I just _love_ when people get to dogfood their own
PR. This should be good.

Like Ivan says, there is a lot of room for improving payments (take Paypal --
please!) but difficulty of affecting payment is not the number one issue for
small content producers. The problem is, ahem, they are trying to sell
something to people who do not want to give them the money that they largely
don't have. Also, there are a million content producers chasing the same pool
of money _and_ many of them get queasy at the notion of actually charging for
value.

Looking at the economy stats in the New York Times I do not get the impression
that high school students have 15 times more disposable income than a decade
ago. However, they are consuming digital content at a multiple far, far above
15x what they were a decade ago. This means that even if you came up with the
Magical Payment Intermediary Fairy who could somehow convince them to pay
their money for things, each producer would see less and less. Also, the
Magical Payment Intermediary Fairy, if she is fair, is going to tell you that
by weight the kids seem to be consuming about 90% Brittney Spears and other
mass market hits (oh, I'm msorry, you thought people pirated music that was
low quality and paid for the artists they wanted to support? Dogfood your PR.)
and 10% long tail, of which you are individually entitled to 1/1000th share.

The traditional way to avoid this is to actually charge money to people who
have it for things they are willing to buy. If you totally lack in ideas,
"Software for grown women" works pretty well and it isn't _nearly_ as fished
out as producing anonymous "content" for the usual suspects.

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Davertron
It seems a bit arbitrary to just chop up a flat fee and pay it out equally
once a month to all the content providers I "flattred"; it's sort of like
saying everything was of equal value, which probably isn't the case. However,
from Flattr's point of view, I see how this makes it a lot easier to manage as
far as distributing funds goes.

~~~
yungchin
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1116108> (I thought I had a deja-vu, but
the top post is a duplicate :))

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ique
A lot of comments here seem to focus on how to use it to replace payments for
an industry (like music) or to replace the subscription model for a webapp,
and maybe that is a bit far-fetched but I can see a huge use in this for low-
level stuff.

If I Google a programming exception and get an answer from a blog I can show
them some love. I create a lot of small websites used by friends and people
from school or some other social context and I can very well see myself
sticking that button on all of them to help me buy an extra beer this weekend.

If it grows enough it might be able to fund some "real" stuff, but I don't
think it should be put in that context from the get-go.

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snom370
People still are generally want to do good and genereally want to pay for and
reward good content if it's super easy and they don't have to think about
spiraling costs.

I think the "flat rate" part might be the trick to make this work. If I know
I'm only paying for instance $5 or $10 a month, why wouldn't I use flattr to
reward content i like?

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thibaut_barrere
I'd be curious to know about other new ways to support payments.

~~~
fexl
Here's a simple way to do it in Loom (<https://loom.cc/faq>).

The customer visits a paid content site, let's call it <https://valuable-
information.com>. The customer's browser has a cookie for that site which
stores a Loom location (an ID such as 1d425bd38f6520e6fab684a18b9c924e). A
pile of assets sits at that location.

When the customer views a paid article at valuable-information.com, the site
debits that Loom location accordingly. Or, if the site uses a monthly charge,
it debits the location once on the first of each month.

The location also serves as an identity for storing the customer's
preferences.

When the balance gets low, the customer can "top off" the location however she
likes. If she decides to stop using the site, she can sweep all the assets
away from the location.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Thank you, that's interesting.

~~~
fexl
I should also emphasize that this alleviates the "password proliferation"
problem.

The customer logs into her Loom folder using a passphrase she already knows.
She creates a new Loom location there, nicknaming it "valuable-
information.com" to remind her what it's for. Then when she signs up at
valuable-information.com, she simply pastes the location into the sign-up form
and presses Go.

As long as her browser cookie lives, she never thinks about it again. If her
cookie ever disappears, she just logs into her Loom folder, copies the
location, and pastes it into the log-in form at valuable-information.com.

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gorm
Would be better with a camel as an example and not a cake because thats what
many industries has to swallow to get into this model. Interesting approach
though. Micropayment is a nut that needs to be cracked and if browsers vendors
doesn't do it someone else should.

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sldkei
At the end of the flattr intro video, the guy says:

 _If you haven't guessed it, flattr is a wordplay of "flatter" and "flat
rate"_

I'm curious, did others think of the "flat rate fee" wordplay before he
mentioned it?

~~~
eagleal
Don't get me wrong, but, are you someone from the marketing "department", or
something like that?

~~~
sldkei
No, but thanks for the chuckle on my first comment ever. :) I was genuinely
interested because that 2nd meaning hadn't even occurred to me.

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minalecs
tipjoy I believed a y combinator companyhas tried something similar to this
concept, and they shut down already .. <http://tipjoy.com/>

I hope they have better luck

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nazgulnarsil
this will forever be up to the content producers rather than some centralized
service. when artists make it easy for me to buy stuff from them I will often
pay them rather than search for their stuff for free.

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Adam503
Don't see security questions addressed.

Any transaction involving anything of value is going to have to be full secure
transaction. A secure transaction takes time and effort for a person to make.

Any new supposedly "simple and easy" transaction system is going to have to
remove security somewhere. Within 6 months of launch, everyone is the world is
going to wake up to find one morning all their flattr cake are belong to some
guy in a Former Soviet Republic. After a few failed desperate patch attempts
wind up with more cake being bulk shipped to former Soviet Republics, Flattr
will be declard a flop.

