Flattr, a social micropayment platform, is a new idea from Peter Sunde one of the founders of the pirate bay. Flattr which is a play on the words flat, rate and flatter hopes to change how people pay and get paid for content on the web. The idea behind Flattr is pretty simple, you pay a flat rate fee every month and when you come across content on the web that you like you can "flatter it" by clicking on the Flattr button (assuming the content creator uses Flattr). At the end of the month all of the clicks are added up and the fee collected is distributed based on the number of clicks.

Check out the following video from Flattr for a more detailed explanation.

At present Flattr is in a closed trial but it is expected to launch at the end of March. The minimum fee to be paid each month is €2 and Flattr will take 10% of all fee's. As the number of users grow they say they will reduce this commission. Members can pay their monthly fee using PayPal, Payson (a Nordic payments system) or via premium SMS messages.

I like the idea but I am not sure how well it will work in practice. The whole concept is based on the idea that people are happy to pay for content that they like. Personally I agree with this but a lot of the time the effort involved in paying for something is too much which means people just don't bother. If Flattr can get a large following of members then they will get around this problem thus make it easy to pay and be paid. The problem is getting the large amount of members, what is the incentive for people to sign-up to Flattr? 

Flattr is not the first company to launch a social micropayment platform. Kachingle operate a very similar service (also in beta) and currently have 90 websites signed up.  Sprinklepenny provide a similar service. Peter Sundes past at the piratebay means he is a well known figure on the Internet and as a result there is quite a buzz around his new venture. This buzz might be exactly what Kachingle and sprinkepenny are missing.

Dave

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