A Little Flattry Goes A Long Way
SXSW 2011: Flattr w/Thingiverse, Readability, Demotix: Rewarding Creators and Crowdfunding
Yesterday, those of us already participating in Flattr‘s social micropayment/micro-donation service to reward fellow Thingiversians for the awesome things they design or make received an “Important service announcement” from Flattr that may change the future of flattry.
From May 1st we no longer require users to flattr others before they can be flattrd. Or in other words, it’s not mandatory to add money to your account to have an active Flattr button.1
For those of you new to Flattr, the model in the past has been that you had to “pay”2 to get “paid”3. Flattr.com itself describes this change in the announcement and elsewhere as “Opening the Floodgates,” and no doubt this major adjustment will persuade quite a few of the reservedly curious to enjoy the opportunity to receive flattry before showing any.4
Speaking of Flattr and Thingiverse, the SXSW 2011 panel discussion “Flattr w/Thingiverse, Readability, Demotix: Rewarding Creators and Crowdfunding” that included Thingiverse.com/MakerBot.com web warrior Marty McGuire has been recently posted as an audio podcast on the panel’s page on the SXSW site (just below the panel description). It is interesting listening, especially when the nitty-gritty of the panel discussion gets underway.
A brief highlight from Marty’s discussion about Thingiverse’s Flattr integration and the future of social micropayment: ”I can imagine a future where that’s how everything is paid for — and that’s fantastic: you ‘get’ based on how great the stuff is that you’ve created.”
The use of Flattr is quite active among Thingiverse users, and the mind-blowing designers, inventions and implementations arriving there each day are waiting for your flattry: their work deserves it.
- The message also instructs us that the correct past tense of “to flattr” is “flattrd,” which suggests that the correct gerund use would be “Flattrng gets you everywhere.” [↩]
- i.e. add ”means”/money to your account for flattrng other flattrrs [↩]
- i.e. have an active, clickable Flattr button for visitors to click to agree to send you a share of their monthly Flattr funds [↩]
- And then, hopefully, to turn around and transform some of their “revenue” into “means” so that they can experience the joy of giving back. [↩]
| Tagged with | Flattr, micro-donation, micropayment, social donation, Thingiverse, thingiversians | 4 comments |
4 Comments so far
Johan Larsby
For the QR-codes there is both an Android-app and an iPhone app available in respective markets.
Jonathan Katz
Is anyone else reminded of the fictional social currency called wuffle in some of the books by copyleft sci-fi author Cory Doctorow?
Gerrit Coetzee
I would be interested flattr if it had two payment methods. I like the idea of a set amount that gets divided up at the end of the month, but there are somethings that I’d like to give a definite amount to.
Pelle Wessman
@Gerrit: We agree – therefor there’s a donate button on each Flattr users’ profile where you can donate a fixed amount of at least €2. As a bonus the fee for all such donations is fixed at €0.2 – same fee no matter the size of the donation.