Flattr Profile: Urban Sundström
Have you heard of Urban Sundström? Maybe you’ve seen him among the people who’ve flattred your things? Does urbansundstrom ring a bell? Maybe you’ve seen him on Twitter, when he’s telling the world what he flattrs.
Within the Swedish Flattr community he has become sort of a legend. Almost everyone knows of him, and a lot of people have asked if he’s a bot created by Flattr to increase flattr activity. I’m here to tell you that he’s not.
Allow me introduce you. He describes himself as a 50yr+ committed Internet being. His interest for communication started when he was around 15 years old, and by 16 he started practicing amateur radio and he’s a still a life time member of SSA, Sveriges Sändareamatörer. He describes amateur radio as sort of a predecessor to the Internet, since it was about connecting indivuduals with that a common interest who communicated through it.
He first describes his Internet background by having been a Digg user for many years. He likes the thought of being able to show your appreciation to people and things he reads with a click. A way to encourage the writers that write things he agrees with. He’s also been very active on the Swedish, Digg-like service, Pusha, which means push.
He’s also an active member within the Swedish Pirate Party.
When it comes to Flattr, he’s the user that has accumulated over 12900 things flattred, to date, and some of them he’s flattred more than once and there are many others that he has subscribed to. I believe I’d have to call him the most dedicated Flattrer I’ve seen. In the way that he flattrs a lot of things, and just about anything he gets his hands on. His flat-rate fee set to €50 a month. So the things he flattrs are getting at least a few cents each.
He is using his mass flattring as a way to encourage new users, especially Swedish ones. He regularly keeps an eye on recent Swedish flattred items and the daily ones so he doesn’t miss a single Swedish item being added to Flattr, if the language is set correclty.
He’s aware that his intense flattring could be regarded as spam. What do you think, and would you do it differently?
