Can ‘Pay a Blogger Day’ help Flattr gain velocity?

Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them

Translation Disclaimer

Subscribe | Sign In

Visit additional Tabor Communication Publications

Tabor Communications
Corporate Video

HPC Market Watch

Can ‘Pay a Blogger Day’ help Flattr gain velocity?

By: GigaOM

Swedish micropayments startup Flattr is hoping it can encourage web users to hand over cash to the bloggers they love -- and gain a bit of traction for its own service in the process.

Swedish micropayment startup Flattr announced a pretty neat idea today: it’s designating next Tuesday — that’s November 29 — “Pay a Blogger Day”.

The concept is fairly straightforward: if there’s a blogger you like to read, why not take a moment to reward for their efforts?

Blogs are something that we read almost daily but how often do we step back and think about the time and effort that goes into writing an enjoyable, informative and entertaining post? Day after day, week after week, and keep the enthusiasm that writing brings the author?

Pay a Blogger Day is our effort to put the bloggers in the spotlight to recognize the value they bring to the internet. Not to mention our own daily web “consumption”. Most of the Flattr team members are (or have been) bloggers ourselves so we know what’s involved and on 29th of November we will give a round of applause to our favorite bloggers and get our wallets out to buy them a coffee / beer / that new cool iPhone app :)

I can certainly think of a few bloggers who I’ll be dropping some cash toward.

Of course, it’s not just altruistic for Flattr. The scheme, if it takes off, will be useful marketing for the company, since the site hopes that all this largesse will end up with increased traffic. After all, its service is largely aimed at helping creative people get paid by patrons online.

It’s certainly an interesting move from Flattr, which has been looking around for a really strong way to entice users in.

I’ll admit I am fond of the idea behind the service — who wouldn’t like the idea of helping people out for being awesome? — but it’s definitely had its trials so far. To start with, it’s treading tough ground in the first place, since “tip jar”-style payments have really struggled in the past.

But it’s also been slower than the team would no doubt like: in the year or so since when it opened up in beta, the site’s developed numerous extras — including a neat approach with Twitter integration — but it’s failed to really catch light.

That’s a shame, because really, it’s the opposite end of the funnel from another very popular service, Kickstarter. Whereas the U.S.-based site focuses on helping creative people fund projects before they happen, Flattr wants to get people rewarded for things they’ve already done. Theoretically there is no reason these two things can’t co-exist — but it’s clear that Flattr needs to move up to the next level if it’s going to break through like Kickstarter has.

That said, it’s been pretty successful in some areas: for some reason, it’s picked up a head of steam in Germany, for example. But it needs more momentum, greater velocity.

Let’s see whether Pay a Blogger Day can make a dent.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Stock Market XML and JSON Data API provided by FinancialContent Services, Inc.
Nasdaq quotes delayed at least 15 minutes, all others at least 20 minutes.
Markets are closed on certain holidays. Stock Market Holiday List
By accessing this page, you agree to the following
Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.
Press Release Service provided by PRConnect.
Stock quotes supplied by Telekurs USA
Postage Rates

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Subscribe to All Content

All

June 18, 2013

June 17, 2013

June 14, 2013

June 13, 2013

June 12, 2013

June 11, 2013

June 10, 2013

June 07, 2013

June 06, 2013

Feature Articles

My Supercomputer is Bigger Than Yours!

Contributing commentator, Andrew Jones, offers a break in the news cycle with an assessment of what the national "size matters" contest means for the U.S. and other nations...
Read more...

Alternatives Emerge as Linpack Loses Ground

Today at the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzing, Germany, Jack Dongarra presented on a proposed benchmark that could carry a bit more weight than its older Linpack companion. The high performance conjugate gradient (HPCG) concept takes into account new architectures for new applications, while shedding the floating point....
Read more...

Intel Snaps New Grips to HPC Hook

Not content to let the Tianhe-2 announcement ride alone, Intel rolled out a series of announcements around its Knights Corner and Xeon Phi products--all of which are aimed at adding some options and variety for a wider base of potential users across the HPC spectrum. Today at the International Supercomputing Conference, the company's Raj....
Read more...

Read more HPCwire features...

Short Takes

Supercomputers: Not Always the Best for Big Data

Jun 18, 2013 | The world's largest supercomputers, like Tianhe-2, are great at traditional, compute-intensive HPC workloads, such as simulating atomic decay or modeling tornados. But data-intensive applications--such as mining big data sets for connections--is a different sort of workload, and runs best on a different sort of computer.
Read more...

Gordon Flashes Its Versatility in HPC Workloads

Jun 18, 2013 | Researchers are finding innovative uses for Gordon, the 285 teraflop supercomputer housed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) that has a unique Flash-based storage system. Since going online, researchers have put the incredibly fast I/O to use on a wide variety of workloads, ranging from chemistry to political science.
Read more...

Supercomputers: Still the King of the HPC Hill

Jun 17, 2013 | The advent of low-power mobile processors and cloud delivery models is changing the economics of computing. But just as an economy car is good at different things than a full size truck, an HPC workload still has certain computing demands that neither the fastest smartphone nor the most elastic cloud cluster can fulfill.
Read more...

TACC Longhorn Takes On Natural Language Processing

Jun 14, 2013 | For all the progress we've made in IT over the last 50 years, there's one area of life that has steadfastly eluded the grasp of computers: understanding human language. Now, researchers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are utilizing a Hadoop cluster on its Longhorn supercomputer to move the state of the art of language processing a little bit further.
Read more...

Titan Didn't Redo LINPACK for June Top 500 List

Jun 13, 2013 | Titan, the Cray XK7 at the Oak Ridge National Lab that debuted last fall as the fastest supercomputer in the world with 17.59 petaflops of sustained computing power, will rely on its previous LINPACK test for the upcoming edition of the Top 500 list.
Read more...

Read more headlines...

Best Practices in Big Data Storage

05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.

Progress in Parallel: the Bull Parallel Programming Center

04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.

View the White Paper Library

HPCwire Live! Atlanta's Big Data Kick Off Week Meets HPC

Join HPCwire Editor Nicole Hemsoth and Dr. David Bader from Georgia Tech as they take center stage on opening night at Atlanta's first Big Data Kick Off Week, filmed in front of a live audience. Nicole and David look at the evolution of HPC, today's big data challenges, discuss real world solutions, and reveal their predictions. Exactly what does the future holds for HPC?

Webinar: Mellanox Virtual Modular Switch, the Most Efficient 40GbE Aggregation Switch Solution

Join our webinar to learn how IT managers can migrate to a more resilient, flexible and scalable solution that grows with the data center. Mellanox VMS is future-proof, efficient and brings significant CAPEX and OPEX savings. The VMS is available today.