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Flattr creates a system where neither the giver nor the receiver knows how large a donation is until next month. That's not really a solution and it certainly i

Flattr creates a system where neither the giver nor the receiver knows how large a donation is until next month. That's not really a solution and it certainly isn't elegant.

stcredzero 16y ago
Why is that a problem? Isn't the perception of a micropayment, such that it's an insignificant trifle? Why does the particular size of a trifle matter to the giver? Also, why is a month's delay universally bad? I can see that it would be bad to some people, but there are certainly a lot of other content-creators for whom this wouldn't be a significant problem at all. Actually, I would think that a month's delay would tend to encourage content with at least some staying power.
tiles 16y ago
It's not a solution for micropayments, in the vein that Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model isn't a solution for the music industry selling CDs. But for casual content creators, the ability to buy a beer for a particularly well-written article or comic, this is excellent. It's a middle ground between ads and micropayments--better than ads, because you know people are rewarding you directly for enjoying your content, and you're not forcing advertising on them. Plus, I think it can be argued that the better your output--the more it's linked to--the more you'll get paid. At least that much is predictable.
mortenjorck 16y ago
I agree with you that these aren't micropayments in the strictest sense. But your argument seems to be along the lines that apples are a poor dietary choice because they're not oranges. A content creator gets paid something (likely in variable quantity comparable to a micropayment) with very little thought required on the part of the payor: What's not to like here?
m_eiman 16y ago
If you depend on it to pay your rent, you're going to need lots of people to click those buttons - and when lots of people do it you care less about how much each one gives and more about the averages. Flattr should publish "average pay per click" statistics, I suppose. And I do think that it's an elegant solution that reduces the number of actions required to contribute to things you enjoy to a single click. [edited to add] Another way to think about it is that the variable is not the percentage of visitors that are willing to pay X dollars for your content, instead it's the average payment of the visitors that are willing to pay anything for you content.
modeless 16y ago
It's not a replacement for PayPal, it's a supplement to AdSense.
jasonlotito 16y ago
You can't just say something and pretend like it's a problem. How is Flattr not a solution? Why is it important to know how much you are giving someone? As a receiver, how is this at all important?

Flattr creates a system where neither the giver nor the receiver knows how large a donation is until next month. That's not really a solution and it certainly isn't elegant.

stcredzero 16y ago

Why is that a problem? Isn't the perception of a micropayment, such that it's an insignificant trifle? Why does the particular size of a trifle matter to the giver? Also, why is a month's delay universally bad? I can see that it would be bad to some people, but there are certainly a lot of other content-creators for whom this wouldn't be a significant problem at all. Actually, I would think that a month's delay would tend to encourage content with at least some staying power.

tiles 16y ago

It's not a solution for micropayments, in the vein that Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model isn't a solution for the music industry selling CDs. But for casual content creators, the ability to buy a beer for a particularly well-written article or comic, this is excellent. It's a middle ground between ads and micropayments--better than ads, because you know people are rewarding you directly for enjoying your content, and you're not forcing advertising on them. Plus, I think it can be argued that the better your output--the more it's linked to--the more you'll get paid. At least that much is predictable.

mortenjorck 16y ago

I agree with you that these aren't micropayments in the strictest sense. But your argument seems to be along the lines that apples are a poor dietary choice because they're not oranges. A content creator gets paid something (likely in variable quantity comparable to a micropayment) with very little thought required on the part of the payor: What's not to like here?

m_eiman 16y ago

If you depend on it to pay your rent, you're going to need lots of people to click those buttons - and when lots of people do it you care less about how much each one gives and more about the averages. Flattr should publish "average pay per click" statistics, I suppose. And I do think that it's an elegant solution that reduces the number of actions required to contribute to things you enjoy to a single click. [edited to add] Another way to think about it is that the variable is not the percentage of visitors that are willing to pay X dollars for your content, instead it's the average payment of the visitors that are willing to pay anything for you content.

modeless 16y ago

It's not a replacement for PayPal, it's a supplement to AdSense.

jasonlotito 16y ago

You can't just say something and pretend like it's a problem. How is Flattr not a solution? Why is it important to know how much you are giving someone? As a receiver, how is this at all important?