Week of March 18, 2013

Flattr is a digital “tip jar” for bloggers and other content producers online. In the past, content creators would include “Flattr Me” buttons on their websites, encouraging people to tip them small amounts of money as a sign of appreciation for what they’re creating online.

Flattr has announced that instead of working like a digital tip jar, users can now add money to their Flattr amounts and then make donations simply by favoriting tweets and liking photos/videos on Instagram, Vimeo, and other social content sites (but not Facebook yet!). Initially, Flattr users will make these donations and then tell people to sign up for Flattr to receive the donations. In the future, people will automatically be notified when they’ve received money from a Flattr user.

At the beginning of each month, Flattr users set a spending limit on their account. For example, if a Flattr user decided to set $10 as the limit, she would like as much content as she wanted throughout the month. At the end of the month, the $10 would be split evenly between the different recipients. If she only like ten pieces of content per month, each creator would receive $1; however, if she likes 100 pieces of content, each creator would only receive $0.10 per like.