Oooooh, I Want to Flattr You So Bad.

Hey that’s a funny looking Facebook “Like” button I added to the site isn’t it?  I have been waiting to get accepted to Flattr for quite some time now. So long, in fact, that I forgot what the service was called.  Their introductory video has stayed with me however.

There is something really compelling to me about this program.  I like pretty much everything about it actually.  Flattr is a service that seeks to let fans make (almost) direct payments to content creators.  In this case both Paypal and Flattr get a percentage (Flattr’s is 10%) for their trouble and you don’t get to select the precise amount that you pay.  In my mind, this is distinguishable from the truly direct payments I’ve seen at signings where people just walk up to guys like Wil Wheaton, hand them a fiver, and say, “Thanks for everything.”

There is something called “consumer surplus” that describes the amount of money over a purchase price a customer would have been willing to pay for a product.  This number is especially relevant (in my mind) when it comes to media items that adhere to a standardized pricing structure.  Comic books are one example of such a product.  Comics generally all cost about the same per issue to buy but there are some I buy that strike me as just barely worth the cover price and some I buy that I would pay at least 50% more for.  (I owe Kirkman a lot of consumer surplus money.)  I have actually considered popping a couple of bucks in an envelope and sending it to ol’ Robert Kirkman, but then I think about how impractical that is.  I think about how strange it would be to ask him to take half of that amount and give it to Charlie Adlard.  Some sites support themselves with Paypal donations but I feel that there is an extra obstacle to overcome in getting people to decide that this time is the time to donate.  There’s also the problem of the micro-payment form itself.  Making a one time payment that is so small feels strange, not to mention meaningless,when you consider the processing fee.  With Flattr, you upload a lump sum and set a monthly amount to be distributed amongst the “things” or content you flattr.  For each time you click a button, the content’s creator gets one equal sized piece of your monthly allotment.  If you like one thing during that whole month, its creator gets the whole piece of the pie.  If, somehow, you are incapable of finding anything on the whole internet that is deserving of two bucks, you still end up paying your monthly allotment, but it goes to charity.  It’s like subscribing to the internet except it’s subscribing to content instead of the network.  The only problem at the moment is that Flattr doesn’t encompass all the content on the web. As it stands now, you still have to sign up for an invitation and much of the content appears to be in Swedish. (Flattr is a Swedish start up.)  I hope that they consider prioritizing applications because I sincerely believe that membership will be driven by a desire to pay major content creators and not out of attempts to monetize tiny blogs.  (However, the fact that I have received an activation code hints that there is no such strategy in place.)  The reason I say this is because any creator attempting to get money out of the system must have an active account. Meaning, they must be paying at least €2 a month.  Most people know that they are not going to recoup that amount via micro-payments.

The only other quick addition I can think of that would be nice is the ability to keep track of what you’ve Flattred by month. I’d like to see how I’m spreading my money around. Right now, the dashboard displays the number of things you’ve Flattred and does the math on how much each creator will get.

People I would like to Flattr:

Not to mention countless bands I would like to support or individual posts that I might find incredibly helpful.  I really hope that this, or something like it, takes off.  I was reading on the Border Stylo blog a little while ago that it would only take a subscription fee of $1/year from its users for Facebook to meet what it brings in from advertising and data crawling. With all the concern over Facebook owning us, you’d think that people would be willing to pay that much to sleep a little easier at night.  Especially since, evidently, despite all these concerns the bulk of us are unwilling to give up our profiles.  If that’s not proof that stuff on the web is valuable to people I don’t know what is.

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