

One of the goals we’ve had for quite some time is to make Flattr a mobile-friendly product, in the true sense of the words. As the Flattr extension can’t be used on mobile this has to be more than just be a change of “design”. It demanded a new approach to how the system is used.

As extensions can’t be used in a mobile browser (Firefox as the exception) and it’s the Flattr extension that does the flattrs, we need to have something that replaces that and works on mobile. The solution is to replace the extension with you. You decide what to add to your list of contributions. We will provide you with lists of the most popular creators, sites and projects, as well as the ability to search from the more than 70k creators, sites, publishers and projects already registered as receivers. Anything from a project, a Twitter user or a Youtuber, to an Opensource project to a Podcast or Website can be supported with Flattr.

This will work a lot like the Podcast and Youtube flattr functions we had, but universally across every receiver. With the difference that the distribution of the funds between all the receivers will be fully up to you (soon). We have migrated both the existing Podcast and the Youtube features into this new use case, as to have a generalised way of managing all your Flattr contributions. (And because Youtube broke their API, boo hoo.)

You are in full control

You will then be able to change the distribution between them with simple clicks on your new contributor dashboard (which will be fully mobile friendly). Making it easy to give a little more or a little less to the creators or projects you care more or less about. All still coming from one single monthly subscription that you can easily change or cancel at any time.

Everything is designed with the prime use case of you sitting on the bus killing time, as we all do.

When will it happen?

It’s happening as we write this. Each feature that’s planned will be live when ready, we are not waiting for everything to be done before we deploy. These changes demanded some heavy backend improvements that we had to do first, but now we are starting to deploy the frontend changes as soon as they are ready. You can already see your new contributor dashboard if you have any Flattr contributions. Like this.

If you don’t have any recurring contributions why not add Wikipedia, EFF and CGP Grey.

Will the extension still work?

Yes, if you are on desktop you can continue to use Flattr with the extension and are free to do so. Just know that if you add contribution as above, your extension flattrs and manual contribution comes from the same budget.

What does this mean for me as a Creator?

This will be a vast improvement for you creators. First, there will be straight forward and simple ways to share your contribution signup page so your fans can start to support you. This signup is extremely streamlined (email + card, only) and takes less than a minute to go through (so no excuses for your fans ;) ). But also when they decide how much each receiver will get in advance you will be able to see in realtime how many contributors you have and how much they give you each month. Helping you learn what works, what they love and allows you to plan ahead. We will update you on these plans in due time and all this will be deployed as soon as it’s ready.

We hope all this will be loved as much as what we’ve done before, and as always, the comments are the place to give feedback and ask questions.