[Noisebridge-discuss] Flattr micropayment system - possible revenue for Noisebridge?

[Neil Kandalgaonkar]

They seem to have been hit with some embarassingly basic XSS errors in 
the first few days of beta release. I'm not impressed.

https://forum.flattr.com/showthread.php?tid=398

I spent a little time trying to figure it all out without actually 
giving them money. In short, it seems to have all the security issues of 
the Facebook Like button except this time with real money. Relying on 
the browser's same-origin policy is not much of a plan.

I'm also not happy with Flattr's hasty FAQ, which answered none of my 
security questions. They also just say that any money not disbursed per 
month out in Flattr is donated to "a charity". *Which* charity?! And 
there's not a word about fraud detection, as far as I can tell. This is 
by far the biggest issue with micropayments, and it takes a lot of 
capital to develop a quality fraud detection system.

Also, 10% is a ridiculously high fee. You are already paying fees on any 
money you inject into their system (the normal way will be via Paypal or 
credit card anyway). Unless it's also part of their plan to be paying 
out a lot to mitigate fraud.

Good things: it's brilliant to tie this to a Reddit/Digg style 
content-voting system and make all accounts capable of revenue. It's a 
good way of getting around the chicken and egg issue. Content creators 
will have an incentive to get the ball rolling by Flattring each other. 
So this might actually spread virally for a while. So maybe they have 
more of a chance than all the other people who tried virtually identical 
ideas before.



On 8/14/10 6:50 PM, John Magolske wrote:
> Anyone know about / have experience with the Flattr micropayment
> platform? It sounds quite interesting, and I was wondering if it
> could be a potential revenue stream for Noisebridge.
>
> As I understand, it works like this:
>
> * Sign up at http://flattr.com/register
> * Pay a minimum of €2 per month ($2.55 as of this writing).
> * When you see a web-page, site, "thing" that you'd like to donate to,
>    if it has a flattr button, click that button.
> * At the end of each month, the monthly amount you've paid is divided
>    by the total number of "things" you've flattred. Each (flattree?)
>    gets an equal portion, and Flattr gets 10% of incoming revenues.
>
> Read more about it here:
>
>    http://flattr.com/
>    http://flattr.com/support/faq
>    http://flattr.com/support/integrate
>
> Any thoughts on placing a flattr button on https://noisebridge.net ?
> I certainly wouldn't want to see any ads on our site, but this seems
> like a fairly simple&  direct way for folks to contribute. Flattr does
> take 10%, but I feel it's going towards building a useful system.
> I guess it'd require a minimum investment of €2 per month, but I
> imagine we'd get back more than that. My thinking is that if there
> aren't any objections to this, some subset of Noisebridgers who like
> the idea could pool some money, maybe €24 to cover a year's fees.
> I'd chip in for that.
>
> Also, I was wondering what anyone thinks about Flattr in general.
> I've been waiting for a system like this to pop up. Seems it'd be nice
> to have alternative to ads as a way of supporting content creators.
>
> John
>

-- 
Neil Kandalgaonkar   ) <neilk at brevity.org>