hola. you may already have seen the little flattr icon next to a user in the forum or in the contributions. now here is the story:

Flattr is a microdonation provider. it allows you to define a personal monthly budget you want to distribute among all the people/things you flattr. it is very convenient because you don’t have to think about how much you’d donate to a single cause. if your monthly budget is 10 and you flattr 5 people/things each gets 2 at the end of the month, if you flattr only 2 each gets 5. this may sound random at first, but only if you view it in detail. on the large-scale (and this is where microdonations are meant to work) those random factors even out. you just think what you can afford to donate per month and then go on a donation spree. easy.

how

1] create a flattr account and add your flattr-user name to your personal settings. now you can already be flattred. see a list of vvvv-users who can be flattred here: connections/flattruser

2] if you also want to hand out flattrs (it feels really good) load your flattr account with money (following instructions on your flattr dashboard) and decide for a monthly budget

3] on vvvv.org you can flattr:

• users via the green flattr button on their userpage, eg. see: westbamuser

• contributions by hovering their uploader with the mouse and then pressing the green flattr button

• forum answers by hovering the user with the mouse and then pressing the green flattr button

4] understand:

• every user/thing can only be flattred once per month
• instead of a single flattr you can also subscribe to users/things by clicking a flattr button twice. a subscription meaning that you’ll auto-flattr that user/thing every month (until you cancel the subscription via your flattr-dashboard)
• you need to be logged in to flattr in your browser in order to be able to flattr things on vvvv.org

why

why would you flattr someone at all? well, for example, because you want to show some appreciation for the time they spent creating a useful plugin/contribution, a tutorial that gets you started, answering your forum-questions, translating wiki-pages to your language,… just instead of +1/liking something or adding “i owe you a beer” send a little flattr.

now in the face of that loony deal some may find such tipping useless, but only those who think in a small scale. imagine everyone always flattring everything he finds useful/interesting on the internet. imagine a westbam making a living from creating tutorials just because thousands of users send him a tip every month. you may say i’m a dreamer..

anyway you now have a convenient way to actually support users whose contributions you value. i was also hoping we could get nice statistics of what things have been flattred via vvvv.org but that seems to be not so easy to realise. at least here is a listing of all vvvv related flattr-things.

flattering vvvv

in real life vvvv.org would have an appstore where users would pay a fee to be able to sell their contributions and vvvv.org would take a cut of 30% of each transaction. for some reasons (but mostly the other) it seems vvvv has not yet grown up so here is what we do instead: flattr itself would take 10% of each flattr but we decided to take part in their partner program so they split it with vvvv and we both get 5% for every flattr you give on vvvv.org.

also over the years we’ve been bugged to accept bribes from people who are not using vvvv commercially thus not having to buy a license. so here you are. if aside from your commercial-licensing duties you want to do your vvvv some good go click that button below. better even twice, so it sticks..

/downloads|vvvv (note to self: integrate on downloads page)

2014, the world is purchasing-in-app and vvvv finally jumping on the ancient wagon that is microdonations. come join the devolution and click that button already.

browser extensions, mobile apps

on many other websites you can flattr content directly via the available browser extensions. eg. on github.com you can flattr any opensource project you like. on vimeo, youtube, soundcloud,… you can flattr the respective content. interestingly there you can even flattr content of people who don’t have a flattr account yet and as soon as they get one, they’ll get your donations.

flattr browser extensions are available for firefox and chrome. and flattr apps are available for android and iphone which is useful for flattring things by scanning their QRcodes via your phones camera.

so that should get you started. now it is your turn. happy flattering..