Flattr - Is Anyone Here Using It?

I’ve recently started using Flattr:
http://flattr.com/profile/illformed

I was wondering if anyone else here uses it?

It’s designed to help people (musicians, artists, programmers, writers, etc) receive small donations or tips from anyone who appreciates their work, while at the same time giving something of their own back to others. Essentially, you must give something in order to get something in return. The idea is that you put some money (currently a minimum €2 euro) into your Flattr account, then you browse around and ‘Flattr’ any content that you enjoy (a Flattr button can be embedded on your site, for example), while others are also doing the same for any content that you have created. At the end of each month, the amount of money people decided to give is divided evenly between all the things they ‘Flattered’, and each of those creators will receive a little share of the money, and vice versa.

Examples:

  • If Bob decides to give €5.00 and he Flattrs 5 people that month, then each of those people will receive €1.00 from Bob.
  • If Sally decides to give €2.00 and she Flattrs 10 people that month, then each of those people will receive €0.20 from Sally.
  • If Joe devices to give €10.00 and he only Flattrs Bob and Sally that month, then Bob and Sally will receive €5.00 each from Joe.

It seems quite small at the moment, but I think it might take off nicely. It makes it quite fun and hassle-free to say ‘thanks’ to people for their work, and perhaps share a little bit of beer money in the process. You don’t really have to think/worry about specific donation amounts, you just put a bit into your account, then enjoy simply clicking the Flattr buttons of anything interesting that you find.

I’ve already spotted a few interesting people on there, such as:

kaneel: http://flattr.com/profile/kaneel
paniq: http://flattr.com/profile/paniq
Mosaik/Rymdlego/Radix: http://flattr.com/profile/rymdlego
Carbon Based Lifeforms: http://flattr.com/profile/carbonbasedlifeforms
Planet Boelex: http://flattr.com/profile/planetboelex

Edit: I do have a few invites if anyone here is genuinely interested in it, or you can simply request a beta invite from the site. It took about a day or so for mine to arrive.

More info…

BBC news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8512263.stm

About page: http://flattr.com/about

A quick video that explains some of the basics:

9zrMlEEWBgY

yeah, I’m looking forward to getting on this (just signed up for an invite). been hearing good things about flattr.

I may want to try it. ;)

Looks interesting!

thanks for posting.

No problem. Let me know when you guys manage to get registered. Post your profile links in here so we can share the love :)

world-class idea of the flattr guys, love the concept!
thanks for the info, kieran :)

just registered:
http://flattr.com/profile/keith303

Almost forgot about this, thanks for the bump :)

https://flattr.com/profile/RobbieS

Interesting concept… ofcourse made by a Swedish posse. Go figure! :ph34r:

I too think the concept is brilliant - thanks for the heads up!

Invite codes are coming back pretty quick and the whole process is so easy: Was able to req, register, and Flattr Glitch in less time it took to drink a cup of coffee. I think its also an excellent idea showing both who, and how many Flattrs have been given. Like many others, money is in a bit of short supply at the moment. Can’t wait to show more love when my situation changes.

Really though, this has the makings of a powerful tool for the independent artist.

have a flattr now: https://flattr.com/profile/visinin

Me too :)

Haven’t added any of my ep’s yet but there’s some stuff if you want to have a look. Oh time, time…

Thought I had registered before but seems maybe not (must have just looked around and when it seemed like there wasn’t much I’d chose to donate to left it.) Just registered now though, on impulse when the site came to my memory.

So who is on it? Any good Renoise Tool creators there and want one of my early Flattrs? ;)

I just added a flattr button to my monstrummediapage after just hearing about this the other day too.

Flattr is a great idea.

But the fees they take from their users are extreme compared to Bitcoin.

With Flattr, people pay around 400,000% more in transaction fee than with Bitcoin.

Out of 274 578 Bitcoins sent today.
Only a total fee of 23.32 was collected.

Blockchain info stats

Flattr
“On incoming revenue you keep 90%”
(Or 10% is taken from you, everytime someone sends you money.)

Whenever you Flattr to someone you Flattr 10% to Flattr…

1 out of 10 transactions end up going to Flattr.

1 out of 100 000 transactions end up going to a Bitcoin miner.

This is because its a privatly owned company that must make a profit whereas Bitcoin is opensource.

From the Flattr FAQ:

“What will happen if I only flattr 1 or 2 things in a month?”
Your entire monthly budget is given to that thing.
When you flattr two things, your monthly budget will be divided in half to each, and so on.

(Flattr do this automatic thing to get more fees from you, because if you spend more money they earn more money.)

Get a one Bitcoin and you can start Bitcoining without having to stress. You own that coin and noone is going to automatically divide it out to get more fees from you.

And everytime you send someone part of that Bitcoin, they will recieve much more of what you sent.

The transaction fee will not go up for many many years, but the value of the coins just might skyrocket in due time since there is only 21 million of them. (If Bitcoin gets as big as Facebook each coin might get worth something like $4000.)

When you send someone a Bitcoin you give them something that really is scarce.

Ofcourse the problem with Bitcoin is that most people still dont have Bitcoins.

But the good thing is that you can get both.

Its easy to get a Bitcoin adress.

You can download the official client.
(I think you will get an adress at once but you have to wait for it a day or two to download the whole blockchain to be able to send your coins.)

If you have an Android phone, I would recommend you to download Bitcoin spinner.
It does not download the full blockchain, you can use it at once. I would not have more than 4 Bitcoins on my phone in case it broke or got stolen.

blockchain.info also have a great wallet.
You can send your Bitcoins to peoples Facebook adress and Twitter/email/phone with it.

They will even send you backups of your Bitcoin wallet to your email.
In case they go down you can load the backup into another Bitcoin client.
(Make sure you turn on two factor authentication and automatic backups to your email.)

Flattr and BitCoin are very different things! You are comparing apples to oranges! Flattr could well have chosen BitCoin to be its currency of choice (rather than Euros) and still take its 10% transaction fee.

Can you BitCoin every single thing posted on Soundcloud easily?

http://blog.flattr.net/2012/03/everything-on-soundcloud-can-now-be-flattred/

No, people will have to display their adress.

But there are services that lets you send Bitcoins to any email, sms, Facebook and Twitter.

I really like what Flattr do. They made microtransactions possible even before Bitcoin.
They can both do microtransactions, one have low fees the other have higher fees.
They make transactions from creditcard possible and everyone have a creditcard, few people have Bitcoins.
So you will reach much wider with a Flattr adress today.
So I´m not saying you should not get a Flattr account.

Just that you should get a Flattr account and a Bitcoin adress.

I have a few Bitcoins that I make small donations with and would had donated to for example some Renoise tools creators as I love their work, if only they
had a Bitcoin adress.

I´m not rich have a kid, so I can´t give away as much as i would like.

Flattr could chose Bitcoin, than they could lower their transaction fee, but since people could donate with Bitcoin without the fee that
might not be the best move yet.

Ofcourse Flattr can do more things than Bitcoin can. When you donate Bitcoins, people do not know where the donation came from (sometimes thats really preferable as in donating to wikileaks) and for what.
With Flattr maybe people can see from who (optional?) and for what.

Still, lots of people have a hard time understanding Bitcoin and think its some kind of weird fraud.

The real Fraud though is from the banks and creditcard companies.

Capital One Bank for pressuring and misleading two million customers into buying additional products when they opened their credit card accounts.

VISA Mastercard Fraud settlement

“swipe fees costs for stores total about $30 billion per year.”

Thats 30 Billion in just one country and just one year, that goes to the worlds richest people, those who are the middlemen.
Those who least of all in this worlds needs more money.

Thats 30 Billion that people could had kept if the transactions in the payment system was free.
Thats is how a real pyramid scheme looks like. Everytime you transact, you pay to the top.

“Visa and MasterCard have banned stores from charging customers who use credit cards more.”

People are kept in the dark about how much the creditcard ads to their daily purchase.

“The dispute between stores and banks dates back to 2005. That’s when large retailers, including Kroger Co., Safeway Inc. and Walgreen Co. began filing price-fixing lawsuits against Visa, MasterCard and other banks.”


Visa Mastercard and other banks are and have been “fixing” the fees to increase profit in countries all over the world.
They have ZERO competition.

That also affects Flattr.

With Bitcoin system, every miner competes with every other miner and anyone can be a miner.
The system is completely open for anyone to join, this makes it almost impossible to have a transaction monopoly with high fees.
As fees are optional and anyone can drop in to mine transactions even you.

"Landis, who owns Pittsburgh-based financial services firm Basic Business Concepts, said that would be a big relief. She’s now paying 3.75 percent each time a customer pays with a credit card. If bank card companies reduce the fees they charge her to 2.75 percent, she would save a dollar on every $100 in sales.

“That’s huge,” she said."

Perhaps, but your statement where “Everyone is having a creditcard” is not true.
Perhaps in the US you can hardly deal without it, but you can as well choose to not take one.
Here in Europe we simply use bank passes, shopholders only pay a very minor fee for the transactions (a few cents), because almost everyone is using them and those costs are more easy to integrate into your product costs (most even don’t do that, because bringing in real cash to the deposit is a lot more expensive per coin or bill unit than paying the transaction fee).Credit cards are usually only supported by larger shops, but they aren’t as much of a common good here in Europe as bank cards are.