I wrote about flattr more than a couple of times in the past. In particular, I’ve complained about the fact that its system made it difficult for people not take their money out, as they take a continuous 10% stream out of each people’s revenue monthly. Also, the revenue out of Flattr at least for me has been, for a while, just a notch above that of Google’s AdSense, which does not require direct interaction from users to begin with.
But one of the things they stared this year made it possible to increase significantly (well depending on your habits) the amount of money that runs in the system. Socialvest is a very neat service that uses the various affiliate systems to gather you funds that you can then employ to donate straight to a non-profit (including Flattr itself!) and if you link it with your Flattr account, you’ll also see that money transferred to your Flattr funds, which you can then use to flattr others.
For the user it’s extremely simple actually: you install a browser extension, and then go around doing your online shopping as usual. Some websites will show up a ribbon telling you that you can use Socialvest with them, in which case the extension injects the needed affiliate code into the order forms so that you get your “rebate”. Considering that Amazon has a 4% affiliate fee, it’s extremely interesting, as I do most of my shopping on Amazon (ThinkGeek also should be supported but when I tried, it seemed like it didn’t work as intended, unfortunately). The nicest part is that it seems to work fine with gift cards as well.
Using SocialVest hasn’t really changed my spending habits — although it did change my preference in where to buy TV series and music, from Apple’s iTunes Store to Amazon’s stores. This was helped by me getting a Kindle Fire and Amazon releasing an Instant Video app for iPad. And now from the fact that Amazon launched the MP3 Store in Italy as well. Furthermore it seems like the J-Pop catalogue in Amazon is quite bigger than Apple’s, and that’s good news for me.
So go on, if you’re using Flattr, and go to Socialvest to have more funds to flattr the content you care about. There’s nothing to lose in my opinion.
