Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant • Hacker News Board

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#61

Post by meunierc » Fri, Jul 09, 2010, 1:14 PM UTC

I too had an early invite, and was all excited to click to register. Once I saw there had to be a minimum monthly payment, I was extremely disappointed and didn't sign up.

Supposing the current implementation is extremely successful, it would be the equivalent to signing up for a monthly service with Disney (or Sony Entertainment, or ) : you pay the middleman, who redistributes appropriately to the content creators.

What's the problem here? This month if I want to buy 1 or 20 CD/DVD, I choose how much money I give. With the monthly service model, my entertainment disposable revenue gets converted to monthly preauthorized payments - along with all my utility bills. Not good.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#62

Post by nmftt » Fri, Jul 09, 2010, 1:55 PM UTC

I know they say they are but Flattr isn't a micropayment service, it's a microdonation service. It's more like an "upvote" than a paypal payment. It's also about recognizing that most Internet users also are "content creators". One examples that comes to mind is social news sites. While people might like what you're doing, generally you get a lot of traffic that is notoriously hard to convert. If donating were as easy as upvoting maybe things could change.

While signup is a challenge, it will be as hard as getting someone wanting to donate the minimum amount (currently €2 I think) to someone. Also it's still in beta and hasn't been "out" for very long.

Last. While I think this "thread" is somewhat decent, could people please minimize the negativity. When it comes to entrepreneurship it's very easy to be right, as most things fail. This describes what I mean better than I can: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/the-problem-...

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#63

Post by danielrm26 » Fri, Jul 09, 2010, 6:40 PM UTC

NickPollard wrote: post #57

danielrm26 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks, man. I'd love to investigate it.

Re: Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant

#64

Post by gojomo » Fri, Jul 09, 2010, 9:06 PM UTC

akadruid wrote: post #59

gojomo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many early adopters will get fuzzies [1] from participating, and paying-in, and delivering shares to their favorite sites, even if they don't get net payments out. Whether that is enough to break-out into a larger audience is the question. But it could be self-sustaining at a small level -- as a mutual appreciation society, with a sort of competition going on among the Flattratti for each others' shares -- even without a breakout.

It's easy to predict something novel will fail; most truly new things do.

[1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Fuzzies