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Flattr is closing down (2023)

flattr.com

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Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#91

Post by mminer237 »

amelius wrote: post #70
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…

Maybe adblockers could take the role of microdonation platforms. I'd pay $100/yr to have ads removed from every site I visit, and have my $100 distributed among the websites that I visit most.

This is essentially Brave browser's entire proposition for its existence.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#92

Post by ffpip »

pvorb wrote: post #14
cleansy wrote: post #8

No wonder given the company that acquired the project is rather hotly debated for "removing ads from websites just to reinsert their own." Edit: Not reinsert their own, but having advertisers pay for the pleasure to not be blocked in their "acceptable ads" program.

I somehow link this practice to the Brave browser, but I'm not sure about it. Does anyone know more about it?

Brave blocks ads on pages you browse, and then sends ad notifications to user who opt into their earning program (disabled by default). It pays them in BAT, a crypto coin they developed. If you want to, you can use these earnings to contribute to sites who have signed up to accept their crypto coin.

It does not replace ads on pages with it's own.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#93

Post by seydor »

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…

Rather , because it's still too difficult to put money in a computer. Arcade machines in the 70s had the perfect impulse-purchase-compatible usage model

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#94

Post by hnbad »

atq2119 wrote: post #29
colesantiago wrote: post #10

This is very unfortunate and surprising, goes to show that even after 14 years Flattr didn't find any market. I was hoping for bitcoin and crypto to show low usage after around 15 years of no legitimate use cases other than speculation, ransomware and other scammy things, but Flattr's shutdown was a surprise. Flattr billed itself as the RSS of donations to really get rid of those ugly PayPal buttons on blogs, website…

Flattr was trying to bootstrap a sort of two-sided market from scratch. They needed to get both hosts/"content providers" and clients/"users" to sign up. This is just a very, very hard problem, and if we're being honest about it, most of the success stories that come to mind got there through burning venture capital, which perhaps Flattr didn't have enough of? I don't think the idea is fundamentally flawed, it's just…

Well, they also made the mistake of initially trying to force both sides of the market to be one, i.e. you had to be a contributor (pay money to others) to collect money (let others pay you money). Also collecting money on behalf of others and then distributing it after sitting on it is an easy way to run afoul of anti money laundering laws in various jurisdictions. Also they did take investments which means they had to not only build a sustainable business but actually create a considerable ROI for their investors or risk them pulling the plug and cut their losses (which is presumably what happened given the lack of detail and "our wonderful journey" speak).

So in other words they decided to play in hard mode (infinite growth) and then kneecapped themselves (to avoid "begging"). It's a miracle they survived this long. I had forgotten about them longer than I had used them.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#95

Post by hnbad »

sunshine_reggae wrote: post #21

No explanation at all. Something seems kind of "fishy", some aspect of it being hidden...

"We ran out of money and our investors wanted to cut their losses and pulled the plug" isn't something you usually spell out in a post like this to avoid burning bridges or appearing "unprofessional".

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#96

Post by BottingRocks »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #84
PurpleRamen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 percent…

Having experience with donation only stuff, I can tell you something with the straightest face: Almost nobody who uses a service, even if they use it a lot, actually goes on to donate. It's a real hockey stick graph where 90% of your donations come from 5% of users. Trust me, everyone says they prefer paying/donating over ads, but when you look at the numbers, just about everyone prefers no compensation (and no ads)…

I believe that in the last couple of years the line between donation and begging has been blurred.

You have things on the extreme side like people begging on tiktok live doing shoutouts to every viewer that donates a significant gift.On the IRL side you also have people donating to the craziest streamers doing the most outrageous stuff outside. Then you also have super donations on Youtube on live podcasts.

When donations are incorporated on a social app it fosters an environment that makes donating acceptable and fun. Hardly anyone is going to trust their debit card/credit card details to a random site, but the masses will trust buying credits/donations/subscriptions through tiktok,youtube, twitch, patreon etc.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#97

Post by itsoktocry »

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…

>but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish.

That's an odd definition of "selfish". Why is there an obligation to hand someone money? If you are running a business, be up front and charge money for it.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#99

Post by jedberg »

jmyeet wrote: post #45
Ygg2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Twitch very much a net loss?

Twitch loses money because Amazon has decided to make Twitch lose money. Why? Because Amazon is charging themselves for the infrastructure Twitch uses (ie AWS). It does that to justify cutting revenue splits (of subscriptions and ads) and increasing ad density. The minimum ad density now is generally 4 minutes per hour. Example: say I'm Pottery Barn and I sell furniture in the US. I sell a table for $500. It costs $1…

> Twitch loses money because Amazon has decided to make Twitch lose money.

This is totally untrue but keeps getting repeated. Yes, within Amazon, the non-AWS business units pay AWS to use AWS. But they pay cost plus a small percent, not retail rates.

The cost to non-AWS businesses is the same as if they had to do it all on their own (actually a little less since they get to leverage AWS's economies of scale).

The profitability of the other business units is actually improved this way. They would be paying more if they were independent and doing it on their own. This is why Amazon is so allergic to spinning out AWS as its own business.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#100

Post by sneak »

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…

This is wrong. Laws around money transmission, as well as egregious rentseeking from payment processing networks, not “people [being] fundamentally too selfish” are why this doesn’t work.

The tech and will is there. It’s just illegal to build it.

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