Users will have the option to automatically give money to website owners who provide articles, music or videos. Flattr Plus is a new product that people will use to monetize online content, but its stable release will be available before the end of 2016. The beta version will roll out “early this summer.”
Here’s an interesting partnership between the creator of Adblock Plus – an ad blocking tool that was released in 2006 and which has been downloaded 500 million times since then, and Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson, the creators of Flattr, content-funding tool which can be used by people to donate real money to websites, in exchange for their content. The latter was released in 2010 and in December that year, it was introduced on WikiLeaks, but then it was replaced by PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa.
The two partners will release Flattr Plus, a tool that will be used by grateful people who want to show their appreciation for content they consume. They will be able to set a monthly budget and every month, they will make automatic payments to website owners. Flattr Plus will determine which website deserves to receive a larger percentage, based on the number of visits to that website, but the budget can be increased or decreased anytime.
The beta version of Flattr Plus will try to figure out how much time users spend on a certain website, how far they scroll, and the program will “solve the challenges of frictionless payments,” as Adblock Plus and Flattr claim.
Flattr’s Linus Olsson explained that “The idea of great content has gotten lost in clickbait headlines and slideshow articles,” and that “If we want to reverse that trend, we need a funding model that is based on engagement and attention rather than mere visits. I am convinced that people’s growing willingness to support great content is the next big change for the Web. And it will happen if we provide them with a simple, easy-to-use solution that allows them to fund the art, music, and journalism they love. So that’s what we are building.”
Website creators can continue to use existing methods to monetize their content – by placing ads or being paid through paypal, and they won’t lose anything if they’ll sign up for Flattr Plus. In fact, their visitors will appreciate their hard work and reward them for what they’re posting.
