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Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

danielmiessler.com

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Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#11

Post by user24 »

Avshalom wrote: post #6

Flattr, and Why It's Not: http://www.websnark.com/archives/2010/02/by-the-way-the.html

There's a good point made in the comments in that article (MRL) - how do we know how much flattr take as their cut?

The answer is made in their terms:

"Revenue to Site Owners: Site Owners receive 90% of the contributed revenue (monies contributed by Flattr Users and distributed to the Flattr accounts of Site Owners). Flattr retains the remaining 10% as its fee. "

I think that's just about reasonable. Certainly any more than that and I'd feel it was a little unjust.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#12

Post by stcredzero »

Avshalom wrote: post #10
jasonlotito wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is wrong. 25 cent micro transactions? Right. The reason MP's failed is not because MP are a bad idea, but because the implementation wasn't realistic. Flattr solves several problems, and does it realistically, and elegantly.

Flattr creates a system where neither the giver nor the receiver knows how large a donation is until next month. That's not really a solution and it certainly isn't elegant.

Why is that a problem? Isn't the perception of a micropayment, such that it's an insignificant trifle? Why does the particular size of a trifle matter to the giver?

Also, why is a month's delay universally bad? I can see that it would be bad to some people, but there are certainly a lot of other content-creators for whom this wouldn't be a significant problem at all. Actually, I would think that a month's delay would tend to encourage content with at least some staying power.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#13

Post by Mark_Book »

I can't see the sense in it. It's analogous to a situation where a newspaper's only paying customers would be other newspapers. The content creators send each other money and the only net beneficiaries are Flattr and the vast mass of interenet users who continue to view for free

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#14

Post by tiles »

Avshalom wrote: post #10
jasonlotito wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is wrong. 25 cent micro transactions? Right. The reason MP's failed is not because MP are a bad idea, but because the implementation wasn't realistic. Flattr solves several problems, and does it realistically, and elegantly.

Flattr creates a system where neither the giver nor the receiver knows how large a donation is until next month. That's not really a solution and it certainly isn't elegant.

It's not a solution for micropayments, in the vein that Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model isn't a solution for the music industry selling CDs.

But for casual content creators, the ability to buy a beer for a particularly well-written article or comic, this is excellent. It's a middle ground between ads and micropayments--better than ads, because you know people are rewarding you directly for enjoying your content, and you're not forcing advertising on them.

Plus, I think it can be argued that the better your output--the more it's linked to--the more you'll get paid. At least that much is predictable.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#15

Post by gojomo »

Avshalom wrote: post #6

Flattr, and Why It's Not: http://www.websnark.com/archives/2010/02/by-the-way-the.html

Not knowing the exact amounts involved isn't a bug -- it's a feature. One major credible theory as to why previous micropayments systems failed is that even thinking about amounts added too much friction. A little like converting a previous voluntary activity to a paid activity, assigning any exact value to it causes a different decisionmaking-scheme to be applied -- which can then kill conversion.

Who cares if every Flattr-click is valued differently, as long as overall, the right people are net-payers, the right people are net-receivers, and the magnitudes generally reward quality? While some activities (banking) require precise accounting, many other socially-valuable activities benefit most from loose accounting.

This criticism ultimately fails because the author himself concludes:

Will I put a Flattr icon on the site? Probably. There's no good reason not to.

Indeed!

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#16

Post by Scriptor »

Mark_Book wrote: post #13

I can't see the sense in it. It's analogous to a situation where a newspaper's only paying customers would be other newspapers. The content creators send each other money and the only net beneficiaries are Flattr and the vast mass of interenet users who continue to view for free

Because the vast majority of people will not be accepting donations because they aren't content creators. If a content creator puts $10 in per month, he could quickly get much more back if a hundred non-content creators each give $1.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#17

Post by Mark_Book »

Scriptor wrote: post #16
Mark_Book wrote: post #13

I can't see the sense in it. It's analogous to a situation where a newspaper's only paying customers would be other newspapers. The content creators send each other money and the only net beneficiaries are Flattr and the vast mass of interenet users who continue to view for free

Because the vast majority of people will not be accepting donations because they aren't content creators. If a content creator puts $10 in per month, he could quickly get much more back if a hundred non-content creators each give $1.

AFAIK 'donate' buttons have never proved successful. People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#18

Post by ugh »

Mark_Book wrote: post #17
Scriptor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the vast majority of people will not be accepting donations because they aren't content creators. If a content creator puts $10 in per month, he could quickly get much more back if a hundred non-content creators each give $1.

AFAIK 'donate' buttons have never proved successful. People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free

This is not a donate button.

Donate buttons are complicated and require you to make all those decisions. With Flattr you have to decide once how much you would like to give per month and that’s that. One decisions and you can click away. It’s hassle free.

I don’t think we know why people don’t like donate buttons and your hypothesis (“People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free.”) might be wrong. Maybe all that’s needed is making donating easier. Maybe not.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#19

Post by steveklabnik »

Mark_Book wrote: post #17
Scriptor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the vast majority of people will not be accepting donations because they aren't content creators. If a content creator puts $10 in per month, he could quickly get much more back if a hundred non-content creators each give $1.

AFAIK 'donate' buttons have never proved successful. People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free

It depends on how you define 'successful.' Most people have the metric wrong, which would be conversions. The correct metric is, "Do I make enough to pay for the effort and time doing this?"

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#20

Post by steveklabnik »

I'm really all about Flattr. I wrote a blog post about it when it was announced. Big wins, as far as I'm concerned:

  * By being subscription based, it's 'set it and forget it.'  
  * By introducing an upper limit, I don't have to worry about overspending my budget.  
  * Flattr's model appeals to me: if I upvote fewer things, they mean more. Sounds about right.
  * One click donations are so much easier than trying to find and pull out my credit card.
I really hope they do well.
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