Flattr
Flattr is a Sweden-based provider founded by and Linus Olsson and launched in March 2010.
Flattr is a project started by and Linus Olsson. Users are given the choice to pay any monthly donation (provided a minimum of 2 ) which is then split equally among websites, pages or service accounts they selected using a flattr button. This is comparable to an Internet . The word “flattr” is used as a verb, to indicate payments through the Flattr system. Upon clicking a Flattr button, users are logged into the Flattr site, thus said to be “” the page they are on. Sunde said, “We want to encourage people to share money as well as content.”
In the beginning of the service, Flattr itself took 10% of all users’ monthly flat rate, however, this fee would later be reduced.
On 28 April 2011, Flattr announced by email that they would not require users to flattr others before they could be flattrd themselves, starting from 1 May 2011.
On 16 April 2013, announced that they would no longer allow Flattr users to Flattr favorites, citing commercial confusion problems they believed would occur between users.
In May 2016, Flattr partnered with the developer of the ad-blocking browser extension to create Flattr Plus, a service which allows users to automatically distribute a designated budget of monthly payments to web publishers based on their engagement. The service was conceived as a way for users to support online publishers as an alternative to advertising.
On 5 April 2017, Adblock Plus publisher Eyeo GmbH announced that it had acquired Flattr for an undisclosed amount. Flattr also announced a beta of an overhauled “zero-click” version of the service adapted from the Flattr Plus concept. The new version launched publicly in October 2017.
Contents
Extensions
A number of platforms are supported including WordPress, Blogger, and Joomla among many others. To foster faster adoption, including on sites that may not natively support Flattr, a Firefox plugin, Överallt (“everywhere” in Swedish) has been developed. It allows the equipped browsers to parse a simple plain-text tag (<code>[Flattr=ID]</code>) and replace it inline with the Flattr widget.
For real-world or non-web content
Flattr can also be used for micro-donations to offline content, including those which are non-computer based, by way of mobile device recognition of . A number of existing services exist to allow for the “flattr-ing” of non-web-based content, including offline content, using many smartphones’ capability of recognizing physical QR codes. Utilizing QR codes attached to Flattr buttons allows for donations to the specific physical or non-web-based item of choice.
Corporate affairs
Funding
In 2012 Flattr received €1.6 million in funding from Passion Capital Investments, LLP and Federico Pirzio-Biroli.
As part of its collaboration with Flattr, Eyeo GmbH also made an investment in Flattr.
- award.
- Top-10 in Netexplorateur 2011.