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Cat’s out of the bag – yes, Flattr now has investors

Published by Linus Olsson // February 15, 2012 // News // 2 Comments

Nordic media has been buzzing since yesterday with the news of an investment made into Flattr. We haven’t really shared this piece of news before as the whole team has been focused on building a better product and kicking ass … Continue reading →

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The origins of the Flattr logo

Published by Linus Olsson // February 10, 2012 // News // 5 Comments

I get the questions, “Who designed Flattr logo?” quite often. The answer is “I made it”, but of course it wasn’t a matter of sitting down and having a polished logo ready 15 minutes later. Here’s the true story of … Continue reading →

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I get the questions, "Who designed Flattr logo?" quite often. The answer is "I made it", but of course it wasn’t a matter of sitting down and having a polished logo ready 15 minutes later. Here’s the true story of the Flattr logo. Everyone knows that way before a product exist you need a logo for it. Or even before you set up a company. Or going even further - you need a logo before you have the people who know how to set up a company and build a product. Logo is just something you need. It’s the same when you’re starting a band - first you come up with the name. Around the time we came up with early mocks for Flattr system we had a text-only. It was just a written name using a not very standard font called Handel I believe. [caption id="attachment_6198" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The first Flattr logo, complete with reflection!"][/caption] It’s a common knowledge that you can’t have a logo that’s just text, right? So started the quest for a graphical symbol. I started by taking something from the product itself and added it into the mix - a flow of money and love. This is what Flattr does so I thought: "Red for love, green for the money". Since it goes round and round I made it circular and the very first icon was born. [caption id="attachment_6200" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The first Flattr symbol, used for the early beta site."][/caption] The result was OK-ish but had one huge problem as it screamed recycling company! Instead it should have said "cool internet revolution thing". Back to the drawing board. [caption id="attachment_6199" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="No, this was not a good idea."][/caption] I tried some different ideas but none were really good, none of them worked. So the whole circle/recycle idea went out the window. And colors red and green with it. In March 2011 Flattred moved in to our current attic office which for us was (and still is) an awesome space that we then shared with a bunch of architects who had also designed it. The office was fitted with furniture in colors that are probably quite familiar to you. Orange and green. We liked it a lot. [caption id="attachment_6205" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="No, this was not our stuff, thanks Staffan for the colors!"][/caption] With fresh colors in my mind and ideas from the creative environment I got an idea that was quite different. It looked good but felt like an icon for an Adobe product, Flash in particular. [caption id="attachment_6202" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="I see an Adobe logo there somewhere."][/caption] Something important happened in the process of tinkering with the logo - the corners of the square were carried over to the text to give more life. And no, it was absolutely not inspired by PayPal's newer logo. That whole box had something in it that I liked, the bend in the F might be something so of course I had to try it. [caption id="attachment_6203" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Getting close right?"][/caption] We had arrived, then the next step was kind of logical. The text got some more tweaks and it was final. [caption id="attachment_6206" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="What should be the first print out of the Flattr logo."][/caption] Flattr logo - it's a symbol of recycling, of love and money, from the bend in the F of the text, based on a modified font, and colored by the office we rented. Sometimes the real story isn't as illogical as it can seam in retrospect. Want to play around with our logo? Download a high rez version

GitHub, tweets & extensions

Published by Pelle Wessman // February 6, 2012 // News // 23 Comments

On the quest to bring you more stuff to flattr we’ve reached a new milestone. Ten months ago we made all Twitter profiles flattrable and now we’re ready to take the next step. Starting today all tweets are flattrable – … Continue reading →

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On the quest to bring you more stuff to flattr we've reached a new milestone. Ten months ago we made all Twitter profiles flattrable and now we're ready to take the next step. [caption id="attachment_6174" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption=" "][/caption] Starting today all tweets are flattrable – not only that – we're also adding GitHub to the mix and making all non-organizational GitHub profiles, repos, commits and gists flattrable. Found some hot new open source project that you want to support? Now that's only a few clicks away. To make all this possible and easy to discover we've updated our Chrome extension so that it shows up in the address bar for all the new content – it should have updated itself in the background and be ready for you to use right away. What about the Firefox users out there? You want to flattr cool tweets and commits as well? We know – that's why we're also launching an initial version of a Firefox add-on today. It's still in review by Mozilla and there are additional things we want to do with it – but you needed to be part of this so we're launching it early anyway. (Wikipedia-support for Firefox will come at a later time, until then Flattr icon will show up in articles that already have been flattred.) [caption id="attachment_6175" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption=" "][/caption] Both the Chrome extension and the Firefox add-on are built on top of our API – they are asking if a URL is flattrable and if yes then our icon is shown in the browser's address bar. That also means that most of the API already supports the new GitHub and Twitter things and are just waiting for you to start mashing it up. We're pretty thrilled about launching this and hope that you feel it’s a great step towards making more and more of the fantastic content available on the web supportable through real donations. Just remember – if you flattr someone who hasn’t signed up yet then you need to make them aware that they have a donation waiting and they should claim it. You’re the right person to do it, it’ll be nice and personal that way. Have fun flattring new stuff! / The Flattr dev team NB! Firefox + Chrome combined represent around 65% of all Flattr.com visitors. 0.3% visit us via their Playstation, thought you might want to know :)

Stop greedy entertainment industry profiting from you

Published by Siim Teller // February 2, 2012 // News // 6 Comments

When I re-read Peter Sunde’s blogpost “Maintain. Hardline. Kopimi.” this morning then something he says at the very end strikes a chord with me personally but also with Flattr “’cause that’s what we do”. Today I urge everyone to make … Continue reading →

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We love the web!  

Published by Linus Olsson // February 1, 2012 // News // 4 Comments

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Lately a lot of acronyms have been thrown around: SOPA, ACTA, IPRED and PIPA. Today an old one was revived, TPB. Even though it does not stand for evil (like the rest) we are still saddened by the context it was used. The Swedish Supreme Court today decided not to review The Pirate Bay case. That means our co-founder Peter is supposed to sit behind bars for a while. This is a sad day for us. But this is about something so much bigger. Trust that this does not really affect our daily work. Peter has since the start been the visionary and guide for the company. He is on the forefront of what we’re trying to achieve, our main spokesperson and the guy with the vision. This will not change. Regardless of where he might be physically sitting or held, the internet sees no boundaries and that is the real place Peter lives -- as does Flattr and the people that work with it. We have previously expressed our concern about SOPA, and today's events have made it even more clear that someone is putting their pawns on the board waiting for the real game to begin. It’s time we understand that the forces behind this may not know what they are doing, what the result will be and that it’s not just sites or business ideas which are at stake here. What’s at risk is our freedom to use the internet. We hope that this is a consequence of lack of knowledge, that the people suggesting these activities and laws don’t know what they will actually result in, that it’s not progress. But we don’t think they will understand and listen unless we scream loudly. It’s time for everyone to understand that internet is the most wonderful creation of modern time, and it has become this wonder because it’s designed as it is. Don’t change it nor try to control it, embrace it. The fundamental fabric of the internet is at stake. It’s easy to look at what is happening as attempts to control media and content the way already done in the physical world. The only way to achieve this is to see and control what every single person does. And yes, that is what is being suggested and implied now. Total control of the most basic systems of the internet. Total control of what you do. And this in order to enforce structures that the internet was built expressly not to include.  As the result we are now even more determined to drive the internet forward. Trying to find a new way to support all the creativity of you wonderful people out there has been the goal from start, and it still is. And with your help we will succeed. We love the web! The Flattr Board - Linus Olsson, Eileen Burbidge, Jan-Erik Fiske And the Flattr Team

Selling digital beer – not the economy as my grandad knew it

Published by Linus Olsson // January 26, 2012 // News // 6 Comments

Does price per kilobyte equal price per kilo? Normal rules of distribution and cost of raw materials don’t apply in the land of ones and zeros which means only one thing – pricing of digital goods needs a proper shake … Continue reading →

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Does price per kilobyte equal price per kilo? Normal rules of distribution and cost of raw materials don’t apply in the land of ones and zeros which means only one thing - pricing of digital goods needs a proper shake up. [caption id="attachment_6053" align="alignleft" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] Long time ago in a not so faraway land people didn’t sell or buy stuff but relied on simple trade. I’ll give you sack of wheat, you give me three chicken. Boom! Valuation was made. Value would probably wary quite much from day to day depending on supply and demand. To make trade more universal we added money into the equation as a “middleman” that made it possible to store value for later use. Bear with me here… One day one clever person had an epiphany: "It would be so much simpler if I charged the same amount for the stuff every time someone wanted to buy it. No more haggling!" So he put up a price sign and fixed price was born. And large portion of the world today is using fixed prices. Yes, there are countries where it’s possible to negotiate prices and some countries where seller even expects you to haggle as it’s part of the culture but in most modern world there are fixed prices. Mass production has certainly helped and for all practical purposes we seem to have figured out the perfect way to price physical goods. Digital goods are… digital Digital goods are something that can be made / copied without additional cost indefinitely. Creating 2 isn’t cheaper or more expensive than creating 200, 2000 or 2 million. Use torrent to spread whatever you’ve made (be it music, ebook, video, software…) and your distribution cost is a big fat zero so that scales indefinitely as well. [caption id="attachment_6054" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="Brygghus brewery in Malmö, nope, this doesn’t scale indefinitely. Photo by Leif."][/caption] What happens if you sell digital goods as if they were physical goods and put a fixed prize on it? Depending on your belief system (and assuming whatever you offer has value to people) you either get filthy rich or you create a setup that does not follow normal laws of value. Physical goods Digital goods Scarcity The less the pricier Can be copied indefinitely, can’t be scarce Demand Higher demand, higher prices As distribution scaled indefinitely demand doesn’t affect price Raw materials More materials, more exotic materials drive cost up Bytes don’t cost anything Production cost Time, manpower, machinery, producing more costs more Additional copy has 0 cost If none of the normal rules apply then how do you value digital goods, how do you put a price tag on them? Answer is simple: You don’t because it’s not possible! That is why Flattr is a big supporter of pay-what-you-want (or for some it’s pay-what-you-can-afford) approach and why we think more sellers of digital goods should adopt it. Enough success stories exist that prove it’s not utopian hippie dream but a solid approach to "selling" stuff online. I’ll stop here and next week will look into why fixed price is still the most common way to pay for digital goods. Disclaimer: Yes, I left the cost of research and initial creation out of this train of thought, that was intentional. I’ll come back to this in one of the future posts.

The catalog is dead, long live the Catalog!

Published by Linus Olsson // January 18, 2012 // News // 27 Comments

I’m the first one to acknowledge that our catalog hasn’t been great. To be honest it was quite awful. And so I’m super happy to say that we killed the old one and just minutes ago released a new an … Continue reading →

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[caption id="attachment_6030" align="alignleft" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] I’m the first one to acknowledge that our catalog hasn't been great. To be honest it was quite awful. And so I’m super happy to say that we killed the old one and just minutes ago released a new an seriously good Catalog. Why does it matter? Because number 1 complaint our users, especially new ones, have is that they can’t find enough interesting content to flattr. So they forget about Flattr and become inactive. Not good. The new catalog adresses a number of issues and I’ll highlight the most important features and improvements. New categories Looking at what’s the most popular content being added on Flattr we came up with a new list of categories. We might add new ones later as you add new type of content. If you don’t think your stuff fits in any of those then make some noise! Music, Video, Software, Games, Podcasts, Photos, Comics, Blog & News, Charities Show, don’t tell - thumbnails are beautiful One thing that we have wanted to solve for a long time are making the catalog much more visual. You might have seen that we implemented thumbnail placeholders on thing pages and dashboard with the new design. This was of course done with the idea of replacing them with "real" images. After some API magic and love from our friends at embed.ly we managed to get the entire site visual. [caption id="attachment_6031" align="alignleft" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] Trending Things To make sure new content can successfully compete with old and popular stuff we implemented a clever decay algorithm which is the heart and soul of the new catalog. This way you’ll almost always see new and interesting Things, not the same old Tim Pritlove (hi, Tim!) over and over again. Search - it’s magic The search engine now includes a lot more meta data giving better relevance in the search results. The results page is still the old and ugly one but we’ll get that whipped into shape in not time. Nerd alert! New categories combines data type and tags To be able to extend the categories and make them useful, split, change and update them we have combined data type with tags for the categories above. This means people that submit things to our catalog need to care about how they tag their things to make them show up in the categories. Read more about how this is done here: The categories, they are a changin’ Puh, that was probably one of the biggest updates to the system so far. Hope you like where we are going. Drop your thoughts in the comments, I’ll personally flattr every single piece of constructive feedback.

Paying for free – is Flattr a payment or a donation?

Published by Linus Olsson // January 13, 2012 // News // 8 Comments

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One thing that we have been discussing back and forth since we started our company is if “flattring” is a payment or a donation. I don’t think we’ve come to an agreement or decision, or if we ever really will, even though we say “payment” on our website. One day people will of course call it a “flattr” but until then, here are my thoughts about one and the other. What’s a donation A donation should by definition be “gifts given without return consideration”. So you don’t have a say what the money should be used for. Or that it was made for certain reason or specific goal. You’re also not entitled to get anything in return. What’s a payment Here’s the definition: “A payment is made in exchange for goods, services, or to fulfill a legal obligation.” This means that a payment gives you the right to something and or you can demand that something happens, something is sent to you or someone does something. This quickly at the problems with a “flattr” - it lands somewhere in between the two. Here are only some some of the arguments for the different sides we’ve heard so far. Flattr is a donation because: * You give without expecting anything in return. * You can’t demand to get anything because of your flattr. * You would have gotten whatever you got even without flattring. Flattr is a payment because: * You get something in return. You wouldn’t flattr without getting this "something". * You flattr a specific piece of content. * The receiver knows why they got the flattr. So why did we choose to call Flattr a "payment"? It’s simple really, and comes down to two arguments. 1. You pay for a reason. “I give you money because you have done this.” We don’t think paying before or after you got this something makes a difference, that is more of a question of how the internet works. 2. We want to change how people think about payments. A payment for digital content can not be done on the old premises of physical goods. We know the word “payment” will be tough for some to swallow as the usual expectation is that you get something after you make the payment - a link to something you can download, something you can print out, something you can put on your eBook or software you can launch. In our case you "pay for free" meaning that you already got what you pay for, the free content. And you pay because you feel it had value for you, because the author and the content was awesome! [caption id="attachment_5978" align="alignleft" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] This will not end here, in the next blog post I will elaborate on “Why payments for digital goods can’t follow the same rules as payments for physical things” Images from Materials Aart, GirlieMac and doublemacchiato

The categories, they are a changin’

Published by Linus Olsson // January 12, 2012 // News // 24 Comments

This post is important to users who add Things to Flattr system. In a few days we will change the category system of Flattr to make finding things in catalog easier and overall improve the usefulness of it. It also … Continue reading →

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