A Flattr Overview

Below, you can see a strange green and orange button. Well, unless you turned off JavaScript and that would be a little bit odd.

What's it for? What does it do? How should we react to this strange new phenomena?

In their own words, "Flattr is a social micropayment platform that lets you show love for the things you like". I'm not sure when it became trendy to drop the letter E from the end of words - maybe Flickr were first, maybe not, but it's some strange indication that you're engaging in the social web, I think. Flattr is a new idea that's just taking hold on the web, which allows consumers to show some appreciation for what they consume. It's not anything particularly new, social bookmarks have allowed this for some time. People are well used to tweeting content to their followers or boosting the rating of something new in Digg, all at the simple click of a button.

There's some currency in that kind of thing - the higher the profile of your content (and the profile raises with more incoming links), the more users are likely to hit your site, and the more chance there is that someone will hit the advertising that's plastered all over it. As I write, I have an average of two users hitting this blog per day, and one of them is me. It's pretty pathetic, but I'm trying to grow it slowly. There's more than the hit rate that takes off when people visit, though, there's the kudos, the warm fuzzy feeling, or as science fiction fandom calls it, the egoboo. Nice as it is, it neither pays the bills or puts food in your mouth, though, and that's where Flattr differs.

Flattr pays out. At the moment, in order to take a pay out, you have to put something in. The whole thing is in a loosely closed beta - it's easy enough to get an invite code if you want to take part, and so I've joined in to be in at the start if it takes off and maybe learn some lessons if it doesn't. So I've given over my ten Euro and I'm looking at sites that are hosting similar buttons to my own, and if I like the content I hit the button. My ten Euro fund is set, by me, to pay out to sites at a rate of two euro a month. If I click two hundred buttons then each of those sites is going to get a cent at the end of the month, if I only hit one then my whole two euro stake goes into their coffers. And, if I hit nothing at all, the money disappears and is donated to a charity. Flattr themselves take a small cut of the payments made, and everyone who gets their button clicked is a winner.

Hang on, you might think, didn't we have this ability several years ago with tip jars and paypal buttons? Well, yes, you did, but in those cases it's not instant and you have to think over what you're prepared to pay and there's no real feedback. Flattr is flattery that can be displayed, it's currency in BOTH senses of the term.

I'm less than convinced by paywalls. If a newspaper wants me to pay a gatekeeper to come in and visit before I know what I'll encounter within, then I'm going to wander off to an alternative. What if once I'm in there I actively dislike what I find? Refunds seem unlikely. But Flattr allows work to survive on merit, it lets me show my appreciation and hand over my teeny tiny micropayment. But if I've paid at the start of the month already and my money is already going somewhere good (the charity option) then diverting some of that payment towards something cool makes me feel better than a simple leecher, taking what is provided and giving back little.

The site is an admitted beta, and until there are a lot of people using it it's not going to gain the critical mass it needs, so it's all a bit experimental. At its heart, though, is someone who looked after PirateBay for some time, someone who knows his tech and probably has the nouse to see this through. If so, it'll be kinda cool to say I was there at the start.