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Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

danielmiessler.com

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Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#51

Post by steveklabnik »

klenwell wrote: post #30
ugh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree. Existing donate buttons are cumbersome and discourage the shift in perception that's needed. I think Flattr's on the right track but the subscription model at its base is still overly cumbersome and inflexible. They've indicated they have more flexible and radical models in mind. Hope they pursue them.

I hope they don't. If it gets more flexible, I won't use it. When this was brought up on Reddit months ago, everyone wanted to see sliders that controlled the percentage of amount that went to different people... it's the definition of a useless power feature.

The simplicity is the entire point. "More flexible" == more complicated, and then I won't want to use it anymore.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#52

Post by gojomo »

patio11 wrote: post #47

There still seems to be a huge barrier to adoption: getting people to sign up for a subscription to Flattr their first site. There are sites worth subscribing to see and there are sites which are not. The sites not worth a subscription have an incentive to freeload on the ecosystem by not working on the pre-sale of the Flattr account and instead just soaking up the one-click transactions. The sites that are worth a s…

Clearly, getting signups is the biggest challenge.

But there's no way to collect without engaging in some promotion: placing the Flattr button where it's visible and talking it up.

And the first wave of signups won't be sites that have the subscriber-pull to add their own paywalls. It's the (much larger) group whose only current option is advertising. These sites have a more simple calculus: can't possibly hurt, might help, might create some warm fuzzies if they like the concept.

It's after that group signs up -- spreads the knowledge -- that nudges to signup could be deployed. These probably aren't paywalls; they're more likely payspeedbumps.

Contenture had a weak name, weak explanatory copy ("freemium for the masses"?), and weak marketing/PR. Its automatic subscription-divvying process would tend more to reward collecting without promoting. And, they quit fairly early.

The key for any such system to work is awareness, adoption, and critical mass -- so it's not reasonable to take the example of a different, nearly-stillborn alternative and suggest it reflects negatively on another variant that's already acheived more attention.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#53

Post by gojomo »

tomjen3 wrote: post #45

There are plenty of problems with Flattr. There is no way to charge for content - you have to rely on the user both having flattr installed and being willing to give you something. As a content producer you have a direct monetary incentive to not link to or recommand others who also use flattr, as it lowers your cut. The service thus have to work against network effects - the more people who use the service, the wors…

Those are smallish problems. At first, you're only getting signups and payclicks from the very generous and conscientious -- early adopters. But that starts the process of making a larger group aware of the mechanism.

At some point, you throw some switches that give those early adopters some other slight benefits -- single-page articles, skipped interstitials, early-access. That nudges a slightly larger, more self-interested group to signup.

Any ad-supported site already has disincentives to outlink -- the reader leaves! Other sites will get the impressions! But they still do outlink, because ultimately audiences value usefully-outlinked content.

But also, every Flattr site is an advertisement for the network. When 99.99% of your visitors are not yet Flattrers, your top goal is to increase signups, not slice a small pie even more finely. Sending people to other Flattr sites best achieves awareness/subscription growth.

And, if that became a real problem, the Flattr central command could incentivize in-network linking with partial backpropagation of Flattr shares.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#54

Post by klenwell »

steveklabnik wrote: post #51
klenwell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Existing donate buttons are cumbersome and discourage the shift in perception that's needed. I think Flattr's on the right track but the subscription model at its base is still overly cumbersome and inflexible. They've indicated they have more flexible and radical models in mind. Hope they pursue them.

I hope they don't. If it gets more flexible, I won't use it. When this was brought up on Reddit months ago, everyone wanted to see sliders that controlled the percentage of amount that went to different people... it's the definition of a useless power feature. The simplicity is the entire point. "More flexible" == more complicated, and then I won't want to use it anymore.

I agree sliders would be overdoing it. But what about penny, nickel, dime, quarter options. Of course, they'd have to be abstracted for an international audience, but make it analogous to coinage, spare change, something tangible that people intuitively relate to. I agree that you don't want too many options. You want just enough flexibility.

I think a really innovative approach would be a pledge/rescind model. Let people freely pledge up front up to a certain liberal limit then present them with the registration, payment, tedious paperwork all at once after the fact. Let them welsh out on as many pledges as they want. What is a pledge that is later rescinded worth? Less than a penny obviously but more than nothing at all. I think most people would willingly agree to follow through on their donations even with given the opportunity to back out, if the details weren't too burdensome at the outset.

The problem with every microcurrency scheme I've come across is that it enforces the kind of rigid transactional exchanges that fit traditional commerce models when, with a little imagination, they could do very interesting things with the networking and computational possibilities available through the internet.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#55

Post by pornel »

I had early Flattr invite, and decided not to join:

• Before I can put button on my website, I have to add funds to my Flattr account.

• I have not seen Flattr buttons on other websites, and I don't want to send whole "pie" to one or two websites I may find in months.

Catch-22.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#56

Post by mikecane »

Flattr would have to be built in as an option to the existing blogging platforms first to get anywhere: WordPress, Blogger (good luck with that one!), Tumblr, Posterous, etc. Until all those happen, this won't go anywhere.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#57

Post by NickPollard »

danielrm26 wrote: post #4
NickPollard wrote: post #2

For some reason when I follow this link, I appear to be logged in as Daniel M with full access privileges - might want to fix that.

I'm running Wordpress, so let's investigate. Can you send me a screenshot?

It appears to be fixed now and I'm starting to wonder if I hallucinated the whole thing, but yesterday I was definitely logged in as you, to the point where I opened up the control panel and could see and edit the e-mail addresses you'd registered with.

If it happens again I'll be sure to screenshot and document it properly.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#58

Post by akadruid »

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.

You're dreaming. There is no pool of millions of non-creators willing to jump through hoops and sign up for a recurring monthly for your article. And there never will be an article worth doing that for, and they will never join. The only people who will ever join are the pie-in-the-sky dreamers who desperately want this to work on their blog. It's just a giant pyramid scheme. The suckers are the blog owners, and the lies to make them join are the millions on non-creators who will never exist.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#59

Post by akadruid »

gojomo wrote: post #52
patio11 wrote: post #47

There still seems to be a huge barrier to adoption: getting people to sign up for a subscription to Flattr their first site. There are sites worth subscribing to see and there are sites which are not. The sites not worth a subscription have an incentive to freeload on the ecosystem by not working on the pre-sale of the Flattr account and instead just soaking up the one-click transactions. The sites that are worth a s…

Clearly, getting signups is the biggest challenge. But there's no way to collect without engaging in some promotion: placing the Flattr button where it's visible and talking it up. And the first wave of signups won't be sites that have the subscriber-pull to add their own paywalls. It's the (much larger) group whose only current option is advertising. These sites have a more simple calculus: can't possibly hurt, migh…

This still doesn't work. For the flattr buttons to be there, there must be mugs paying for the system. Those mugs are doing it becuase they think they are going to be taking money out - but, like any pyramid scheme, only the people at the top of the pile will make any money. How long do you think those mugs will keep paying in without getting anything out?

I'm willing to go on record with the following predictions:

1. No big site will get enough money to be worth the pixels the button takes up. 2. No small site will get back as much as they put in. 3. The number of people who pay in without expecting to get anything out will be essentially zero. 4. Flattr will shut down entirely within 2 years from today.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#60

Post by spacemanaki »

Groxx wrote: post #42
steveklabnik wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supporting content authors. No, really, I'm serious. I made a comment below about this, you're thinking about the wrong metric. It doesn't matter if everyone does this, it matters if enough do to sustain whatever projects are using it. I myself have made money on a project through solely donations. Not a ton, but that project is also on hold for a minute. I think you're being overly cynical, and you think I'm being o…

The first time I activated my account was to send money to Vimcasts, which I'll probably do monthly now that it's set up. If I find nothing else flattrable (I'm picky with my money), they'll get a decent amount of money out of me, and I'll call it worthwhile.

Vimcasts is so good, I likely would have done the same, if I hadn't just donated via PayPal.
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