Flattr Out of Closed Beta, Open to All

Just yesterday I was trying to see if I could generate Flattr beta invites. I’m a little disappointed in how slow things have been since I joined, both in terms of getting and giving Flattrs to other people. I just don’t see that enough folks using it that I think about doing it on an average day.

Well, today I saw the news that Flattr is out of closed beta and anyone can sign up. I think that’s good news. I think it’s an interesting project but my evaluation of it so far has been skewed by lack of critical mass and the fact that most of the users of it to date seem to be German speakers so I’m not that into most of that. I personally love the “no mental transaction cost” of not deciding how much to pay. Just Flattr the way you’d Digg anything, and the money takes care of itself.

Some of the user pushback I see is from people whose response is “but but … I don’t get to decide how much to pay? Everyone gets the same thing from me that month? Where is my fine-grained control <sputter />.” In my own life, I am doing everything I can to eliminate those large number of decisions I make every day that I just don’t give a shit about. “Give this site $0.03 or $0.05? Is this one $0.17 worthy?” I don’t want to think about any of that.

I’m going to give Flattr more of a shot to determine how useful I find it. Whenever I run out of my first chunk of money, I’ll evaluate whether it seems reasonable to recharge that account. I’m guardedly optimistic. I’d like to see some webcomics people adopt it, I think they might find it more useful and lucrative than Project Wonderful. What can it hurt to try?

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

2 thoughts on “Flattr Out of Closed Beta, Open to All”

  1. Just found flattr the other night. Getting my sites keyed in. Haven’t gotten any flattr yet (second day), but saw you hadn’t on your article either so I hit you one up. Here, I’ll hit your blog count that I just noticed. Now you’re at 4!

    I really have no problem with splitting up the money, if I want to support more I’ll add more money to my monthly. Whatever. I don’t see why anyone who reads internet content wouldn’t sign up to this to help. $2 a month, it might seem wack that you are only giving 34 cents, but as this grows it won’t matter. Image articles or songs getting thousands of flattr. That could be $100, or $1000 dollars. Pretty awesome I think.

    A couple questions.

    Do you know how to get the digg digg plugin to work while having the flattr plugin (i’ve been considering adding digg and facebook…). I’m tempted to say forget the other stuff, especially facebook, but a lot of people use them and them sharing with those sites does add traffic, which could add more users to flattr if the see that button before hand.

    Anyway, good luck! Hopefully Flattr takes over the net!

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