Despite the fact that they’re free services, Twitter, Instagram and all the rest are making a ton of money on your backs. Usually this is the part where we’d tell you to rise up and destroy your internet overlords, but that clearly isn’t going to happen. Still, shouldn’t you be getting something from Choire Sicha favoriting one of your tweets, aside from the impulse to email your friends and tell them you’re putting it on your resume? The people at Flattr, a startup that’s been around a couple of years, think so, and they’ve started a system to make that possible. Finally, all those dumb teenagers bragging about their Twitter followers might actually have a point.
The Next Web was happy to break it down for us: while Flattr originally worked by convincing websites to put their own Flattr button on there, which people would be able to click to donate some money to an online tip jar that came out of an account they maintained with Flattr. Finding that websites were balking at adding yet another button that may or may not be used, Flattr is now cutting out the middleman and allowing people who sign up with Flattr to send money to people by favoriting tweets and “liking” Instagram, Soundcloud or Vimeo submissions. Of course, if you want to get a slice of this money, you need to be a Flattr user. Flattr says they’re going to eventually send emails to people telling them they have unclaimed Flattr funds, so uh, maybe keep on eye on that spam folder for once.
Get on this service fast though, if you’re interested. While it all sounds like a good way to take advantage of your cleverness or “photography” skills, Next Web points out that these services don’t need to go along with Flattr’s plan. They pointed to Twitter not being a fan in particular, since they wouldn’t have complete control of how Flattr works with the service. And since they’re so shortsighted that they’re killing off the good version of Tweetdeck to burden us with their shitty in-house coding that drove everyone to Tweetdeck in the first place, we’re inclined to believe it.