Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flattr is closing down (2023)

flattr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 247 posts

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#31

Post by TheFragenTaken »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

Twitch subscriptions and Patreon has shown, that if you bind a website/project to a creator, and you get benefits for donating/subscribing, that you can have a very viable business model. Both as a creator, and as a platform to facilitate it.

Most websites, and indeed open source projects are pretty faceless, and require limited interaction with it's creator. I believe, if you somehow "solve" that problem first, people will beg to donate/subscribe.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#32

Post by sgerenser »

colesantiago wrote: post #20
infecto wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly agree. I still wish when it came to news sites there was a micropayment option so I could read a single article for $0.10 or something along those lines.

> still wish when it came to news sites there was a micropayment option so I could read a single article for $0.10 or something along those lines. Same. I'm shocked that the NYT didn't use Flattr on their articles for this. To access the full version of the NYT currently costs $0.50 a week so it would have been possible the NYT could charge $0.50 per article, or $5 for the year (one time no subscription) through Flat…

The $0.50 weekly price for NYT is a teaser rate. The full price for digital only was recently raised to $195/year. I imagine they make too much money from people who subscribe at the teaser rate and forget to cancel (like all newspapers/magazines) to make it worth exploring other business models.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#33

Post by thfuran »

teekert wrote: post #27
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

Sadly disagree, I've put some BTC on my Podcasting 2.0 player (Podverse) and stream it to every creator that wants them (via the Bitcoin Lightning network).

And you think more than about 0% of web users do the same?

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#34

Post by goda90 »

I had an idea just like this several years ago and seriously considered doing it as a startup but somehow never heard of Flattr. I'm curious what kind of marketing to website creators did they try.

Did anyone try Google Contributor, which was a similar idea?

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#35

Post by geokon »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

I know HN froths at the mouth on this topic.. But Cryptominers/Hashcash are also an alternative. It's only been made non-viable due to the major players who depend on ad-supremacy making sure all browsers fingerprint and block them

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#36

Post by scrollaway »

geokon wrote: post #35
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

I know HN froths at the mouth on this topic.. But Cryptominers/Hashcash are also an alternative. It's only been made non-viable due to the major players who depend on ad-supremacy making sure all browsers fingerprint and block them

It’s also a huge waste of energy at a time when the planet is on fire.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#37

Post by pikrzyszto »

I used Flattr for a while but struggled with:

- flattr support discovery: Instead of having a "Flattr" button on the webpage I visit I need to navigate to flattr website and search there... but I'm not going to do that. Maybe adblocker removed that button?

- ownership confirmations - I wanted to donate to person $PERSON and found them on flattr. But I had no idea whether this flattr account actually belongs to $PERSON. I reached to $PERSON about that and never heard back so I stopped donating.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#38

Post by blub »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

There’s an overabundance of content/apps/sites. Most websites and projects are worth zero to most people.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#39

Post by Ygg2 »

TheFragenTaken wrote: post #31
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

Twitch subscriptions and Patreon has shown, that if you bind a website/project to a creator, and you get benefits for donating/subscribing, that you can have a very viable business model. Both as a creator, and as a platform to facilitate it. Most websites, and indeed open source projects are pretty faceless, and require limited interaction with it's creator. I believe, if you somehow "solve" that problem first, peop…

Isn't Twitch very much a net loss?

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#40

Post by vintermann »

infecto wrote: post #16
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

Sadly agree. I still wish when it came to news sites there was a micropayment option so I could read a single article for $0.10 or something along those lines.

You want to be nickeled and dimed?

That was the whole problem Flattr was trying to solve. You decided up front how much you could afford to spend supporting artists and pursuits of creativity and public goods, and it got distributed evenly between everyone you choose to support. It was a great idea, and I was an early user.

However, they had the problem that most of the people who you might want to support, were not on Flattr. And Flattr made a poor move early on: in a bid to avoid getting spammed by low effort/beggars, they demanded that you give and take: If you wanted to be able to receive, you had to use the service yourself.

This was eminently fair. It was also a disaster, because it exposed a fact that's obvious when you think about it, but which is a crush to most "creatives"' ego: The vast majority of us are net consumers! We watch way more than we create ourselves. Most minor bloggers/youtubers/podcasters wouldn't want to admit that, they'd just see "I pay more than I get out of this? This sucks!"

Later they backed down from this demand, and then they got the problem with low effort/begging. All along they had the problem that some influential people really wanted to see them fail, due to their association with The Pirate Bay.

Post reply on HN