Our joint vision: User-driven, sustainable funding for the open web
eyeo, parent company of Adblock Plus, today officially announced its acquisition of Flattr, the award-winning content-funding solution that has already paid 30,000 online content creators and publishers since it was created in 2010. This follows last year’s news of the collaboration between Adblock Plus and Flattr to create a completely overhauled version of the micropayment service. It will allow users to directly and sustainably fund content they love – simply by browsing the web, without reliance on ads or paywalls. For the first time ever, users will be able to pay any website they visit with just one single account. Implemented as a browser extension, the new Flattr will completely eliminate the pain of entering payment data and check-out processes.
Peter Sunde, co-founder of Flattr commented: “Over the past 10 months, we collaborated closely and in fact, became one team with a joint vision. So it was just natural to remove the remaining structural barriers and make it official. We share almost identical values of making the internet safe and fair for everyone. We’re excited to continue our work on the Flattr project to give back control to the users of the internet. They should decide how they want to use the internet and how they want to support the content they enjoy. The internet is a decentralized network with unlimited sources of creativity. This free and open internet needs a payment option that reflects these core values.”
The core team of the original Flattr company will continue its operations with all staff members from Malmö, Sweden. Peter Sunde will act as advisor and his co-founder Linus Olsson will continue to head operation and implementation.
“At eyeo we’ve always looked for ways to make the web more fair and less annoying. We started with Adblock Plus, which helped pioneer the idea of constructive ad blocking: letting in better, more respectable ads that ad blocking users accept. Flattr makes micropayments automatic and effortless, thus it will be the most user-friendly payment solution on the internet. Together, constructive ad blocking and Flattr complete eyeo’s vision of putting users in control of an internet that is fair and still profitable,” said Till Faida, founder of eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus.
“Over the past several months, it became very clear that we needed to go beyond a partnership and truly bring Flattr into the eyeo family. This allows us to go that extra mile and finalize our vision of enabling hundreds of millions of users to choose how they want to pay for the content they consume. This is a game-changer,” Faida added.
Users and publishers can sign up to use Flattr at https://flattr.com/beta to be among the first to test the new zero-click version of Flattr.
About eyeo
eyeo was founded in 2011, when Till Faida met Wladimir Palant; and the two decided to take Palant’s sometimes hobby, Adblock Plus, and try and change a billion-dollar industry with it. Today, Adblock Plus is used by over 100 million users worldwide. The built-in Acceptable Ads program is a unique approach to creating better online advertising that other ad blockers have employed as well, allowing it to reach more than 130 million users. With the help of an international community of volunteers, eyeo builds open-source products that sustain and grow a fair and open web, and gives users control so they have a better online experience. eyeo has offices in Cologne and Berlin, Germany. Please visit us at https://eyeo.com/.
Media press kit with FAQ, images and company statistics is available at: eyeo.com/en/press.
Follow Adblock Plus on Twitter at @AdblockPlus and read our blogs at adblockplus.org/blog/.
About Flattr
Flattr is a micropayment service, founded in 2010 by Peter Sunde and Linus Olsson.
Flattr aims to promote and sustain a free and open internet by allowing users to value online content and support creators monetarily to help them create more awesomeness.
The overhauled version of Flattr will further automate that process to eliminate hurdles for users that want to contribute with small amounts to various sites.
Since its first launch in 2010, have over 30,000 content creators received payments through Flattr.
Learn more at https://flattr.com. Follow the project on Twitter at @Flattr
