
Flattr no longer requires users to spend money in order to receive money - sp332
http://blog.flattr.net/2011/04/opening-the-floodgates/
======
patio11
Like most of the "I wish I could be paid money for things without people
paying money for things" ideas, this has some fundamental issues with it, and
Not Quite A Classic Pyramid Scheme is only one of them.

The biggest issue is that customer acquisition for Flattr largely requires
somebody worth paying money for to "sell" their audience on signing up for
Flattr, and that this is an objectively stupid thing for them to do. If you're
going to "sell" anyone on Flattr, you should be selling - no scare quotes - a
subscription to your own site, where you would collect substantially all of $N
a month rather than a fraction of 90% of $6 a month.

Flattr only makes sense for freeloaders on the system - and they'll squabble
over < $5 apiece in revenue until the Pirate Bay founders move on.

~~~
kmfrk
I'd rather see flattr as a +1/Like economy where content can be anything from
an NYT article to a Disqus comment. This way, the social buttons also actually
make sense for people to use. On HN, I usually forget to upvote shared
stories, and I basically only do it nowadays to save it as a HN bookmark. The
HN upvote is very ambiguous that way.

Readability's subscription feels a little like buying absolution for blocking
banner ads - and perhaps circumventing paywalls. Still, many people find it
attractive.

I don't think having to find people worth donating to is the main problem; the
problem is documenting that flattr can be an income model worth spending your
time on. Success stories in other words. It's a little similar to YouTube
partnerships that way - as I understand, some, maybe few, people earn a decent
chunk of change, but Google seem to strong arm its partners into keeping their
experiences to themselves. I'm sure this keeps a lot of people away from
trying the model.

~~~
bergie
_"Put your money where your Like is"_

------
kmfrk
Interesting suggestion on Twitter:

> hendrikmorkel Hendrik Morkel RT by flattr > I'd like @disqus to implement
> @flattr buttons in the comments so that I can Flattr smart contributions.

A lot of interesting potential in this flattr that has yet to be unexplored.

[https://twitter.com/#!/hendrikmorkel/status/6145605252429824...](https://twitter.com/#!/hendrikmorkel/status/61456052524298241)

EDIT: I also look forward to seeing HNers use this for their weekend projects.
HN is not always an interesting way to gauge appreciation.

EDIT2: It's also the perfect tool to counter slacktivism as seen on reddit
where people think they contribute to ending world suffering by upvoting a
story detailing it. Now, it's possible to, say, create a subreddit where all
the submissions have a flattr profile for a cause specific cause.

Clicking a button is so damn easy, and if they same can be applied to
charitable donations, it might revolutionize online donations. You can even
make a poster with a QR code!

~~~
EJE
A Flattr intern and I were discussing a Pay by Facebook button and we made a
point that in order for Flattr to scale, it would need better integration into
popular services. Before putting a Flattr button for comments, just integrate
it into Disqus so that anyone with Disqus on their blog can now receive Flattr
donations. [http://ericelias.posterous.com/facebooks-credits-will-
trump-...](http://ericelias.posterous.com/facebooks-credits-will-trump-flattr-
the-next)

~~~
kmfrk
People on Disqus need to have a flattr account first, though. Preferable,
people without an account would receive a message that people wanted to send
them money for their comments, when people tried to flattr them.

It's easily doable - the only thing holding it back is Disqus's desire to
innovate. So let's do our best to make sure it lands in Daniel Ha's desk.

It could also be interested to see it on some forums - but I'd worry that
people might get an incentive to game the system. The same might apply to
Disqus to some extent - go for the low-hanging fruit in a very partisan-
lenient political discussion for instance. It might work on forums if it was
only possible to flattr the opening posts and the work that went into making
them. Gated forums where people are admitted at the admins' discretion might
also make this work.

------
sp332
Huh, that went down quick :) Here's the text of the email they sent me:

Important service announcement

Hello!

Flattr’s first year has been great. And not just for us but for tens of
thousands of bloggers, podcasters, developers, designers and other creators
out there. Just ask Tim. We’re now making an important change to the service,
one which should open the floodgates of Flattr, if you will.

From May 1st we no longer require users to flattr others before they can be
flattrd. Or in other words, it’s not mandatory to add money to your account to
have an active Flattr button. How does this affect you?

If you’re mainly using Flattr to make payments you will soon have much more
content to flattr.

If you’re using Flattr both to make and receive payments then you no longer
need to check your balance at the end of each month to see whether your Flattr
button is still active or not. It is and always will be.

If your Flattr button was once deactivated because balance dropped to zero, it
is now active again. Forever.

This makes Flattr simpler

We have good reasons for making this change and we’ve just added a post about
it on our blog. In a nutshell, we just didn’t need to force the give before
you get principle onto people. During the the last year we’ve learned that
people want to flattr the content they like and therefore we decided to drop
any rules that made the service restrictive or outright complicated.

We hope you’ll like the simpler more straightforward Flattr. If you have any
comments, questions or feedback please get in touch via our blog or support
page.

Linus, Peter and the rest of Flattr team

~~~
espinchi
That's great.

I'll seriously consider a Flattr button in my Android apps.

Just a quick piece of feedback about the blog: make it easier for people that
land on your blog to find out what Flattr is about! The most promising link
(in the "About" in the bottom) is broken. Maybe some quick words in the side
would help.

~~~
sp332
Yeah, Flattr has never been very good at communication. The blog doesn't even
have a link to the company home page! And even once you navigate to
<http://flattr.com> the best explanation of how Flattr works is this YouTube
video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zrMlEEWBgY>

------
pdx
You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that
seems like a classic pyramid scheme. Good that you stopped doing that.

~~~
gloob
_You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that
seems like a classic pyramid scheme._

I'm having a hard time thinking of a single B2B company that isn't a pyramid
scheme, by that definition. Pretty much everyone spends money in order to make
money. Easy example: before I can build and sell my widgets, I need to buy the
parts for them.

~~~
awj
Well, sure, but you can make almost any statement sound ridiculous when you
abuse word meaning to pull it that far out of the original context.

Being required to put money into Flattr before other people could give you
money sounds a bit shady. It would be like the postal service refusing to
deliver your mail unless you send a few letters every month.

~~~
ugh
Hm, so what if Flattr charged you a $5 fee instead? They just want you to use
it yourself, I can see nothing wrong with that.

~~~
awj
There isn't anything wrong with asking people to use it themselves, but then
it also isn't quite the "online tip jar" that many people want to see it as.

Maybe that's the point, but I honestly have been confused as to why the
process with Flattr is so complicated. What I want is a "great blog post, kid,
here's a quarter" button. Flattr feels like it's mostly there except I have to
keep track of who I've Flattr'd each month to make sure I'm handing out the
amounts I wanted to. It could be that in the end this is "the better way", but
for the need I feel this mechanism is kind of off-putting.

~~~
jacques_chester
> What I want is a "great blog post, kid, here's a quarter" button.

A conventional tipjar, by the sounds of it. These have been tried and they
generally don't work. My theory is that this is because they violate Krug's
1st Law.

------
rflrob
_More than 175.000 things have been flattred almost half a million times_

This implies that every item has been flattred, on average, just under 3
times. Does this seem a little low to anyone else? I suppose the real question
is how many things the average user flattrs, and hopefully that's one of the
numbers they have up their sleeve.

~~~
Groxx
Not so much, really. A fair number of people make a new button for, e.g.,
every blog post.

I think the main reason for that is that it's not possible to re-flattr
someone. One click per month, and that's it. So, to allow multiple donations,
you _must_ run multiple buttons :/

------
avree
On an only-slightly-related note, have they realized that their metadata is
pretty screwy?

Googling Flattr turns up the following result:

Flattr - Social micropayments Flattr works well with. Learn about our APIs
andintegrating Flattr with your website. " Flattr has developed a small but
thriving network of users " ...

~~~
VoxPelli
Opps - we will fix that. Thanks for pointing out!

------
jacques_chester
Well drat, that'll make it harder to compete with them in future.

sincerely, a potential competitor

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wildbunny
This doesn't work - it still asks you to put money in your account before you
can submit anything...

~~~
VoxPelli
It starts next month - we wanted people to know in advance.

~~~
wildbunny
Ahhh, thats good to know :) I can reactive it in a couple of days then...

------
potomak
would be great if it worked!

~~~
thomasdavis
Not working for me either

