Flattr subscriptions and Popularity Dance

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One of the lesser known features of Flattr is the ability to subscribe to a Thing. It’s a simple way of donating to something over a longer period of time without having to remember to do it manually.

It’s great if you’re a regular user of free software, listen to podcasts, enjoy political analysis of a blogger or want to support your favorite indie band until they make it big and start selling out football stadiums.

How do I subscribe to something?

1. First flattr it as normal.
2. The button now changes and you have three options — subscribe, Tweet about your flattr or write about it in Facebook.
3. Click the subscribe button and you’ll be given three choices — 3 months, 6 months, a whole year.
4. Pick your period and that’s it.

You can later check your subscriptions on your Dashboard where you can also extend or cancel them.

Close to 11.000 active subscriptions show that peeps like the feature, hope you give it a try.

The Popularity Dance — what’s that?

Just once a month subscription features helps to reveal what are really the most popular Things on Flattr. Here’s how:

Our catalog uses something called decay algorithm to constantly recalculate the order of things in categories. If a Thing gets a few flattrs in quick succession it gains “heat” and goes up in the listings but then starts to lose “heat” as time starts to pass.

It’s a pretty clever way of making sure that the same content doesn’t always top the categories making them boring.

All the subscriptions “fire” at the same time in the beginning of each month and for a short while the listings in categories show the real popularity of content that people value enough to subscribe to. A real Popularity Dance, if you will.