Flattr
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| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Malmö, Sweden |
| Owner | Eyeo GmbH |
| Founder(s) | Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson |
| Industry | Micropayments |
| Slogan(s) | Fund creativity |
| Website | flattr |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Required |
Flattr is a Sweden-based microdonation provider founded by Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson and launched in March 2010.
In March 2010 Flattr launched via an invitation-only basis and then opened to the public on 12 August of the same year.
Flattr is a project started by Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson. Users are given the choice to pay any monthly donation (provided a minimum of 2 euros) which is then split equally among websites, pages or service accounts they selected using a flattr button. This is comparable to an Internet tip jar. 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 "flattring" 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.
In December 2010, Flattr received large-scale attention when it was tweeted to be a method of donating money to , which had recently been cut off by PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard.
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, Twitter 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 Adblock Plus 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.
As the service relies on network effect to prove useful, it is necessary that users join and have the opportunity to flattr and be flattr'd. A wide 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 ([Flattr=ID]) and replace it inline with the Flattr widget. This extends the range of Flattr, so that not only sites that support Flattr, but all sites, can have Flattr buttons.
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