Flattr Plus

Flattr was a Swedish-based micropayment service founded in March 2010 by Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson. Sunde is also known as a co-founder and former spokesperson for The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine. The founders envisioned a system where content creators could receive direct financial support from their audience, reducing reliance on traditional advertising revenue.

The business operated on a micro-donation model. Users would set a monthly budget they were willing to donate to content creators. Initially, users clicked a "Flattr" button on websites to allocate a portion of their monthly budget to that creator. Later versions evolved into a "zero-click" service using a browser extension that automatically distributed the user's budget to websites based on their engagement, a concept developed in partnership with Adblock Plus and branded as Flattr Plus. This system was designed to allow users to support publishers as an alternative to advertising. Flattr's revenue was generated by taking a 10% commission from the transactions on its platform.

In May 2016, Flattr partnered with the developers of Adblock Plus to create Flattr Plus, which would automatically distribute a user's designated monthly budget to web publishers based on their engagement. This collaboration led to the acquisition of Flattr by Eyeo GmbH, the parent company of Adblock Plus, in April 2017 for an undisclosed amount. Following the acquisition, Olsson continued to lead operations while Sunde acted as an advisor. The service received €1.6 million in funding in 2012 from Passion Capital Investments, LLP and Federico Pirzio-Biroli. Despite its efforts, Flattr officially shut down in November 2023.

Keywords: micropayments, content creator funding, micro-donations, online tipping, digital content monetization, creator economy, ad-free funding, subscription service, browser extension, Eyeo GmbH, Peter Sunde, Linus Olsson, Adblock Plus, online publishers, sustainable web funding, content compensation, digital tipping jar, web monetization, creator support, automatic donations