Flattr is a social micropayment service that takes the concept behind the Digg or Facebook "Like" button and backs it with real money. In the company's words, "Flattr was founded to help people share money, not just content." Registered Flattr users pay a €2 minimum fee per month, and then mark their support for content by clicking the Flattr button. At the end of the month, that user fee is divided between all the content that's been flattered.

You've Got to Give to Get

Of course, Flattr has a lot more active users than simply WikiLeaks. Sites using Flattr buttons include the blog TechDirt and the French news site Numerama. At the beginning of November, less than 3 months after launching its beta, Flattr had 46,056 registered users and had passed more than €114,057 through the system. All that prior to Cablegate, which has given Flattr a substantial boost in traffic (although the site is still in beta).

Some of the early skepticism about Flattr suggested that people would be unwilling to pay for content they could already get for free. Others said that the only people that would use Flattr would be publishers. But Flattr reports that well over half of its active users are there to give rather than to earn money. Flattr says that "The system (and liquidity or currency in the system) grows every month; average users' deposits grows every month; average monthly allocation (we set minimum at €2) grows every month -- and more than half of the users are just Flattring, not receiving."

Flattring as Giving Back

In the spirit of giving back (and arguably as a result of the success that the company has seen around WikiLeaks' donations), Flattr now makes it possible for non-profit organizations to use Flattr for fundraising and engaging with their supporters. And as such, Flattr has removed the need for them to pay a monthly minimum fee or to Flattr others' content each month; Flattr also waives the standard 10% fee on revenues received.

And in coming days, Flattr also plans to roll another change: the ability to flattr specific amounts, up to €20 per donation and up to €50 per month. Flattr calls this "a significant development with the system and should open up a flood of donations for WikiLeaks - and other users, publishers and participants in the system."

In 1999 Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä started Mobile Disco in their native Finland. The next year, as it grew in popularity, they ginned up what has since become a popular element of online environments, the micro-payment model, and launched Habbo Hotel. Since then 172 million folks have churned out a character, grabbed a room, thrown up decorations, chatted, played games and whatever else it is kids get up to these days.

Of course it hasn't always been roses. Only a year ago, things weren't looking great for Sulake, which had to lay off 40 employees due to a revenue decline of $14 million from the year before. In 2007, the Dutch police arrested a kid for stealing $5,800 worth of make-believe furniture. (No I'm not kidding.)

Here's a little numerical snapshot of our Finnish friends.

• 172 million characters created
• 40 million monthly user hours
• 15 million monthly unique visitors
• 120 million active user-created rooms
• Users from over 150 countries
• 11 languages

Happy birthday, Habbo Hotel. We've sent you a lifetime supply of umlauts. (OK, it's no Kalevala, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a broken Nokia.)

As a blogging platform, Open Salon is about as standard as they come. The front page features a number of especially interesting posts as determined by the editors, as well as the ability to see the top rated, most read, and latest posts. Users can comment, rate, and save the posts on popular bookmarking sites like delicious, digg, and reddit. Open Salon also provides profiles and RSS feeds for every user. We were not able to determine if there was any way to post to Open Salon from a desktop blogging client, but at least for now, there is no indication that this would be possible, so users are restricted to posting from the rich-text editor provided on the site.

Free Tips

To process micropayments from the Tippem jar, Salon.com has chosen Revolution MoneyExchange, which is still officially in beta, but must have proven stable enough by now to be chosen by Salon.com over competitors like PayPal or OboPay. Salon.com has set the default tip amount to $1, with $0.10 being the minimum and $1000 the maximum amount one can tip (for tips of $1000, Open Salon advises you to contact the author directly).

It's important to note here that everybody who signs up from a Revolution MoneyExchange account from Open Salon immediately gets $10 to give away as tips from Open Salon. While this will surely seed the system at the beginning, the real question, as Caroline McCarthy also points out, will be if users will keep tipping after those first $10 have been exhausted. After all, it's easy to tip if it doesn't cost you anything.

Good Fit For Salon.com's Culture?

Given that most users on the web consider content to be free, it will be hard for Salon to foster a culture where paying for blog content becomes a regular event. But then, Salon.com is, of course, one of the few sites where a lot of the content is not free, but only available to subscribers or after being forced to watch a 15-second full screen advertisement. Because of this, Salon.com's audience might be more willing to pay for content than the average Internet user.

Tippem, by the way, is only available to US citizen at this point.