Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

There still seems to be a huge barrier to adoption: getting people to sign up for a subscription to Flattr their first site. There are sites worth subscribing to see and there are sites which are not. The sites not worth a subscription have an incentive to freeload on the ecosystem by not working on the pre-sale of the Flattr account and instead just soaking up the one-click transactions. The sites that are worth a subscription will have to heavily presell the subscription, without their best single reason to subscribe (imposing a paywall) and with less efficiency than just setting up a paywall subscription system for themselves. Plus, instead of getting to keep 90% of the $6 a month that they'd get if they sold you on a subscription to their own site, they'll end up giving most of it away to freeloading sites.

See also Contenture, which was essentially identical to this business model.

There are also interesting problems in a world where everyone has a Flattr account, but we're not in that world and won't ever be.

Clearly, getting signups is the biggest challenge.

But there's no way to collect without engaging in some promotion: placing the Flattr button where it's visible and talking it up.

And the first wave of signups won't be sites that have the subscriber-pull to add their own paywalls. It's the (much larger) group whose only current option is advertising. These sites have a more simple calculus: can't possibly hurt, might help, might create some warm fuzzies if they like the concept.

It's after that group signs up -- spreads the knowledge -- that nudges to signup could be deployed. These probably aren't paywalls; they're more likely payspeedbumps.

Contenture had a weak name, weak explanatory copy ("freemium for the masses"?), and weak marketing/PR. Its automatic subscription-divvying process would tend more to reward collecting without promoting. And, they quit fairly early.

The key for any such system to work is awareness, adoption, and critical mass -- so it's not reasonable to take the example of a different, nearly-stillborn alternative and suggest it reflects negatively on another variant that's already acheived more attention.

This still doesn't work. For the flattr buttons to be there, there must be mugs paying for the system. Those mugs are doing it becuase they think they are going to be taking money out - but, like any pyramid scheme, only the people at the top of the pile will make any money. How long do you think those mugs will keep paying in without getting anything out?

I'm willing to go on record with the following predictions:

1. No big site will get enough money to be worth the pixels the button takes up. 2. No small site will get back as much as they put in. 3. The number of people who pay in without expecting to get anything out will be essentially zero. 4. Flattr will shut down entirely within 2 years from today.

Many early adopters will get fuzzies [1] from participating, and paying-in, and delivering shares to their favorite sites, even if they don't get net payments out. Whether that is enough to break-out into a larger audience is the question. But it could be self-sustaining at a small level -- as a mutual appreciation society, with a sort of competition going on among the Flattratti for each others' shares -- even without a breakout.

It's easy to predict something novel will fail; most truly new things do.

[1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Fuzzies

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