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Flattr is "failing" (failing as in, failing to gain substantial traction) because of lack of users. Notch (of Minecraft fame) used Flattr for a long time on his
by citricsquid 16y ago
Flattr is "failing" (failing as in, failing to gain substantial traction) because of lack of users. Notch (of Minecraft fame) used Flattr for a long time on his blog and he removed it because he made so very little off it, even though he has a very high traffic blog.
They shot themselves in the foot when they launched the service: a "private beta". It was the most ridiculous idea ever, here is a service that NEEDS every user they can get vaguely interested to sign up and use it, and then when they have users interested (the initial launch "buzz") they say "nope sorry, it's a private beta, we'll send you an invite some time".
I used Flattr for a while and so little sites used it I just ended my subscription. I was lucky to get an invite too... they should have been trying to take everyone who WANTED to use the service, instead they pushed them away.
- StavrosK 16y agoIn their defense, artificial scarcity can drive buzz for the product a lot, if done well. Also, a service that's not yet done can't afford to launch to the public, especially when there's money involved. Rather than think about launching in beta vs launching publicly, think about launching in beta vs launching much later. Which is the better choice?
- citricsquid 16y agoIn the case of Flattr? The latter would have been much more beneficial for them. I wanted to sign up to give them my money, to improve the value of their service (the value for content providers is the amount of users) and I had to "apply" and wait for it. Everything about that is wrong for Flattr.
- StavrosK 16y agoSo it would be better for flattr if you weren't even aware of their existence, rather than know about them and be unable to sign up? I don't believe that...
- robryan 16y agoI think they fit more into the Google Wave category than say the gmail. With gmail everyone could instantly gain value from having an account, with wave, people fired it up, had a quick look around and noticing none of their friends were there to talk to forgot about it.
- fleaflicker 16y agoCould reddit pull this off? Their "reddit this" buttons are already everywhere.
- tesseract 16y agoHmm, that sounds like it might have some potential. I'm envisioning a setup where the first upvote is free, but you can get a second one by spending a quarter (or whatever amount of money) that gets shared with the site owner.
- cpeterso 16y agoOr Facebook. Their "Like" buttons are everything and I'm sure Facebook would love to collect money from users, not just advertisers.
- watchandwait 16y agoPeople forget that PayPal got started by literally giving money away -- $10 -- to get people to sign up.
- limmeau 16y agoPerhaps that's a regional thing? A subjective majority of the German blogs I read regularly have a flattr button.