A while a go I noticed a Flattr button on the blog of Seif Lofty. Out of curiosity I clicked on it and ended up on the Flattr website. Flattr is a micro donation service. You setup a monthly budget (minimal 2 euro) and that money is divided over all articles and things you Flattr. In the official Flattr video they use birthday cake as a nice metaphor.
Click here if you can’t see the video above
Flattr already seems to gain quite some momentum. E.g. when you google Flattr you get over 2M search results.
It’s funny to see that in a time where people like Rupert Murdoch are talking about pay walls because good news can’t be for free according to him something like Flattr is starting to catch on. Setting up pay walls for news will not be a success in my view, because there always will be a source where they get the same news for free. I believe more in the model of Flattr where the content is free and people can make a donation. However I’m not sure if this would work Rupert Murdoch’s Times Online. Would somebody really consider donating money to Rupert Murdoch?
Flattr’ing GNOME
We could start adding Flattr buttons to the GNOME website or in About dialogs of applications such that people can show their appreciation of GNOME applications. Thinkin about this a bit more the About dialog could also have a Paypal donation button. With these donations the GNOME foundation can fund hackfests and conferences.
As a user, when there is a feature that I really enjoyed, I often miss an easy way to say thank you on the back of a check (which to me seems the sincerest way to do so). Flattr makes this insanely easy, I would love to see it in every applications About box.
As for Murdochs publications, I would flattr any good content regardless of its origin.
Yes! I have also noticed flattr button on Seif Lofty’s blog and I have found the Idea great. For some time I was looking for a nice way to show my love to content creators:)
Cheers
Wow, this is pretty awesome.
I really like the idea behind flattr in general. But there are some problems with flattring software. You can only flattr something once. If some software just made my day I would like to flattr it – but what if it again saves the day? I already flattr’ed it.
imho: A good place for a flattr button would be the release notes. Its a prominent place and it would probably get quite some attention – and so it would get quite some flattr (and though this it might get more attention
).
It doesn’t really solve the “flattr twice” problem mentioned above though.
@Florian: You can Flattr something once a month – so if you want to flattr something many times then just return the next month and flattr it again. Quite a reasonable limitation I think
Also check out FlattrFOSS: http://raphaelhertzog.com/flattr-foss/
This is a delicate subject. For instance, in the about dialog with a ‘donate’ button (it doesn’t matter if it’s paypal or flattr), should the money go to the GNOME Foundation, or to app author?
Hey all,
To me, it (to maximize impact) it should go like this: All Money is distributed to GNOME/KDE/FS etc Foundation and then everything (transparently) is distributed to the correct place and developer.
If there is no Foundation (or yet) everything has to go to the maintainer of a given project who distributes the money again, (or searches for a trustee to distribute it further), and makes everybody happy.
Yours, Andreas_P
Flattr’ing is something more than giving money to developers. One can give his peac of cake
for every “thing” someone make. Even blog posts can be flattred.
I found this really exciting. Eg i like really Omg! Ubuntu blog and if theyl have an flattr button, i can flattr them