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Flattr adds support for funding in Bitcoin

70 points by llamataboot 13y ago

lkrubner 13y ago
One could question whether micro-funding efforts will ever take off, but let's leave that conversation aside for a moment. Of those sites that have focused on micro-funding, I've noticed that Flattr seems to be on the cutting edge of every good decision that a company in this space can make. I used to work for a competitor, Kachingle, and I am sad to say that Kachingle lacked the vision to keep up with this space, or add the features that the users of these sites wanted. Flattr seems to understand their own user base, and also seems willing to think creatively about what the users might want next.
jmduke 13y ago
I like Flattr's overall schema, which is basically: - Set a monthly budget of money you're going to use (eg. $100.) - Every time you like/retweet/flattr/etc. someone, you give them a share of that budget. So if you flattr five people, they each get $20; if you flattr twenty people, they each get $5. I think the issue here is what makes using Flattr better than, say, purchasing goods (ie. an EP/tickets for a musician or a print for an artist.) As the user, this seems like a win-win for me, since I get something fungible out of the donation and the artist gets more money than had I done it through Flattr, since I'm a capricious selfish human who is reluctant to budget a large amount of recurring costs away from myself.
rmoriz 13y ago
While I liked Flattr I doubt that it's a sustainable service: It's a huge vendor lock in, like iTunes, but without a large user base/customers that are probably worth to accept the terms and conditions and the vendor lock in. Flattr is popular only among a specific kind of websites: Here in Germany, flattr users are probably podcasters and bloggers. Even as a popular site your traffic/audience is much smaller than in the US or global, so ad-driven sites and even flattr isn't going to work. Large content producers, like the Axel Springer Verlag, recently started an "inhouse" SSO subscription platform. No dependencies except CC providers. No 30% charges. Full control. Even as a high profile community person with 5000+ Flattrs, you can't live from that e.g. it brings in maybe 2500€/month but those very few people work a lot and invest a lot in technology. So i doubt this is enough. Also, nobody knows how long it will last. The subscription functionality was implemented as auto-expiring and changed only a few months ago (iirc)… With lots of cheap and easy payment providers (like Stripe), paypal and bitcoins it became quite easy to accept "real donations" e.g. 10€+
jgreen10 13y ago
What I completely missed about BitCoin at first is that it enables programmatic exchange of money. That's big.

70 points by llamataboot 13y ago

One could question whether micro-funding efforts will ever take off, but let's leave that conversation aside for a moment. Of those sites that have focused on micro-funding, I've noticed that Flattr seems to be on the cutting edge of every good decision that a company in this space can make. I used to work for a competitor, Kachingle, and I am sad to say that Kachingle lacked the vision to keep up with this space, or add the features that the users of these sites wanted. Flattr seems to understand their own user base, and also seems willing to think creatively about what the users might want next.

jmduke 13y ago

I like Flattr's overall schema, which is basically: - Set a monthly budget of money you're going to use (eg. $100.) - Every time you like/retweet/flattr/etc. someone, you give them a share of that budget. So if you flattr five people, they each get $20; if you flattr twenty people, they each get $5. I think the issue here is what makes using Flattr better than, say, purchasing goods (ie. an EP/tickets for a musician or a print for an artist.) As the user, this seems like a win-win for me, since I get something fungible out of the donation and the artist gets more money than had I done it through Flattr, since I'm a capricious selfish human who is reluctant to budget a large amount of recurring costs away from myself.

rmoriz 13y ago

While I liked Flattr I doubt that it's a sustainable service: It's a huge vendor lock in, like iTunes, but without a large user base/customers that are probably worth to accept the terms and conditions and the vendor lock in. Flattr is popular only among a specific kind of websites: Here in Germany, flattr users are probably podcasters and bloggers. Even as a popular site your traffic/audience is much smaller than in the US or global, so ad-driven sites and even flattr isn't going to work. Large content producers, like the Axel Springer Verlag, recently started an "inhouse" SSO subscription platform. No dependencies except CC providers. No 30% charges. Full control. Even as a high profile community person with 5000+ Flattrs, you can't live from that e.g. it brings in maybe 2500€/month but those very few people work a lot and invest a lot in technology. So i doubt this is enough. Also, nobody knows how long it will last. The subscription functionality was implemented as auto-expiring and changed only a few months ago (iirc)… With lots of cheap and easy payment providers (like Stripe), paypal and bitcoins it became quite easy to accept "real donations" e.g. 10€+

jgreen10 13y ago

What I completely missed about BitCoin at first is that it enables programmatic exchange of money. That's big.