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why the flat rate? i can see how it works for the business (people pay a regular, fixed amount; fees are less obvious), but i don't think it will be attractive to users - if i want to give something to someone i want to decide how much to give / know how much i am giving.

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Clay Shirky wrote about this, see eg [1]. The idea is that you need to minimise the number of decisions people have to make, or they won't use the service much. You don't want to cause "decision friction" on every site and every month again.

Kachingle [2] and Sprinklepenny [3] apply pretty much the same rules that are outlined in this video - it seems a point of convergence for this type of service...

[1]: http://www.shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html [2]: http://kachingle.com/ [3]: http://sprinklepenny.com/

If I were to use this system, I would probably write a userscript to search for a flattr connection on pages that I visit that would remind me to pay if I liked what I got.

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