The F-Revolution
A new social micropayment service is out to revolutionise the world of blogging. This June, Flattr is about to go from beta to official to show the web community some love – for good content, good music, or simply, good ideas.
Flattr is like a two-way economy of give and take. Consumers give money for the content they appreciate. Once you subscribe to Flattr, you pay a monthly fee ranging from 2 to 200$. At the end of the month, this money will be divided up amongst all the things you liked, just like a piece of cake you want to share with all your friends. Producers like bloggers, musicians, or filmmakers can take up the money by implementing a button that pretty much works like Facebook’s “Like” Button. And will then be awarded with the shared money of all the consumers who flattred them. (Source: Flattr)
Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde and Flattr co-founder Linus Olsson think that with Flattr, “people will start to think of sharing money just like we share knowledge, that flattr will be the final and missing, building block that makes the internet economy go full circle and users start to “pay” users for what they do. Information should be free, but everyone should also have an easy way of giving something for it if they want to.” (Source: LoadBlog).
A pretty good idea which might turn webonomics on its head. But apart from implementing a new service, Flattr has a much bigger issue to solve. Or answer to give: Why should I pay for content that is for free anyways? Flattr must change the mindset of many people to convince them to actually pay money for what they consume – voluntarily.
But what you give is what you get. And if you give nothing for the content you consume, you cannot expect it to have good quality. Instead, a payment model like this could elevate quality standards in the web, as producers will put an eye on creating good content because they know they could get money out of it. And, here is the even bigger picture. If people only produce valuable content on the web, there is a slight change that we might see less rubbish in the future. And therefore, at least a small cure of the information overflow on the web.
So thank you Flattr, at least for trying to save the world from low-quality content. And rewarding bloggers and other creatives for all the effort they put into their works. It’s one small step for consumers, but one giant leap for the blogosphere!
What do you think? Will Flattr prove successful or will it fail because nobody wants to pay for content? Leave us a comment 
Tags: blog, Flattr, social micropayment