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Flattr is closing down (2023)

flattr.com

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Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#71

Post by PurpleRamen »

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…

IMHO their main problems were: they delivered too early, and failed in what they offered. When they started, there was no donation-economy like we have today on Twitch, Ko-fi, and others, nor was there an established support-hivemind like we have with Patreon, Github and others. So people did not know what they should do with it. And on the other side was Flattr a bit annoying to use in the beginning, and had percentage-based donations, instead of fixed values IIRC. People are selfish, but also willing to share, if you give them enough reason.

But thinking about, maybe the lack of a social component and some virtual rewards would have been beneficial. But I guess, after the first fail, nobody cared anymore for it, and they somehow failed to find their market.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#72

Post by DamnInteresting »

goda90 wrote: post #34

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?

I've had a similar idea simmering in my head for over 10 years, I even purchased a fitting domain name for it. It's always been a "one of these days" kind of project. My idea is different enough that it might have a shot where Flattr fell flat, but it's exceptionally hard to gather users, even if you build a superb product.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#73

Post by bdhcuidbebe »

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 used flattr since it released for some websites i ran. had maybe 100 dollar there, mostly from an adblock filter list i used to maintain.

eventually they just deleted my account due to ”inactivity” in maybe 2017 or so.

this made me stop recommending them

they just kept my money

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#74

Post by mh- »

k__ wrote: post #64
amadeuspagel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't want to solve that problem. I don't want to have a parasocial relationship with the author of every blogpost that I read.

To quote something I literally read 5 minutes ago in "Perhaps the Stars": "everyone has relationships with people far away, who inspire, entertain, role models, and also the people we work so hard for: fans, viewers, the next generation, kids somewhere, posterity. I think those asymmetrical relationships are part of what it means to be human, part of the teamwork. Humanity is teamwork. And the asymmetry doesn’t for a…

I don't know the book beyond the quick google I just did, but I disagree with:

>And the asymmetry doesn’t for a second make those relationships any less valid, or less important, or less real.

I think that people developing these so-called parasocial relationships is probably not harmful until it becomes a substitute for them developing "real" ones. But I see that growing rapidly, and I think it's a problem in the future.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#75

Post by rchaud »

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.

Are you able to purchase anything for 10 cents today? The price of a short self-published ebook on Amazon is 30x that, $2.99, and plenty of people buy those.

I understand that low-quality blog posts are worth nothing but if a viable micropayment option existed, those lazy posts would disappear (they only exist for SEO and collecting ad impressions). Websites and blog content would be more like what Substack has, which is semi-longform stuff that doesn't need to be padded with "blog" style posts.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#76

Post by rchaud »

jstummbillig wrote: post #23
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.

Since we have to assume that they assessed it, I suspect that they concluded the math would not work out. A possible explanation: News websites are cross financing their content. You spending a dollar on the paper, that only interests you in parts, is part of a model that makes it work (and probably also part of a model, where papers still feel wiggle room to editorialize for stuff they think is important, even thoug…

News websites are not independently owned. NYT is publicly traded, Wash Post is owned by Bezos, Time Magazine is owned by Benioff, etc.

They survive on patronage outside of their subscriber base.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#77

Post by PurpleRamen »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #56
TheFragenTaken wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Twitch subscriptions and Patreon has shown, that if you bind a website/project to a creator > Most websites, and indeed open source projects are pretty faceless, and require limited interaction with it's creator This is ultimately a polite way of saying that the "author" (which can be a content creator, a OSS maintainer) needs to establish a parasocial relationship, use a self-aggrandizing approach, and create dram…

> and create drama to entertain its users.

You don't need Drama, but you should indeed communicate and deliver something worth the peoples' money. I mean, there are many big and small creators who just steadily and silently deliver their work and have usually no drama at all.

Drama is just popular because it's cheap, fast, and any idiot can create it. So people who have nothing else of worth, tend to live from this.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#79

Post by Jochim »

geokon wrote: post #65
rcxdude wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a terrible option. Cryptomining in a browser is pure banditry: it's incredibly inefficient to the point the user loses way, way more than the site gains, and it provides basically nothing to crypto.

Why is it banditry.. you can opt out of going to the website. I think you're not looking at the alternative objectively.. Ads are pure brain rot that just make society worse while providing virtually nothing useful to "the user"

If you're robbed by bandits you can choose not to travel on that road again. That doesn't mean that you weren't robbed the first time.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#80

Post by bawolff »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #56
TheFragenTaken wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Twitch subscriptions and Patreon has shown, that if you bind a website/project to a creator > Most websites, and indeed open source projects are pretty faceless, and require limited interaction with it's creator This is ultimately a polite way of saying that the "author" (which can be a content creator, a OSS maintainer) needs to establish a parasocial relationship, use a self-aggrandizing approach, and create dram…

Sometimes i feel like people make too much of the "parasocial" buzzword, as if its new.

Entertainers have been doing the pass the hat thing for hundreds of years. It is not a new phenomenom.

Historically, it has generally worked for entertainers, and i guess religion. I don't think there are historical paralells to open source really. Maybe it just doesn't work for that sort of thing.

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