You tip your waiter. You tip your cab driver. You tip your tow truck driver, pizza guy, barber, barista, bellhop, and valet. But should you tip a writer, a filmaker, or a journalist? Social micropayment sites like Flattr say yes.
Here’s how it works.
Every month, a Flattr user puts in an amount of money. Then throughout the month for each time that the user clicks on a Flattr button on a blogpost, or song, or whatever, a percentage of the monthly amount will go to the person who added the button to their content. Flattr takes 10% of the initial monthly allocation and the rest is left to the content writer.
The Swedish company launched the site as an invite only service early last year, then opened it up to the public and won the “Best New Startup in 2010” at the Europa Startup Awards. But Flattr isn’t alone. Kachingle has developed another method of “social payments” and that old stalwart of the internet’s infancy, the “donate” button can still be found.
Micropayment sites have been called the savior of journalism by some, and decried by others, but dropping a couple ducats into a writer’s hat will certainly appeal to entrepreneurial and independent journalists.
If you want to know more about the micropayment debate, check out the Freakanomics Quorum on the subject.
What do you think? Will Flattr help put money into the pockets of content creators? Let us know in the comments.
