Just Entered Into MassChallenge!
True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island… to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.
A Solution for Wikipedia’s Money Problems… The Flattr Button
Wikipedia has been soliciting donations from its many readers through ads placed above their articles. These “appeals to emotion”, in my opinion are viewed more as a joke than they are taken seriously, thus the recently popular meme going around showcasing the various Wikipedia members next to titles of weird pages, or funny quotes.
WHY THESE ADS?
Wikipedia wishes to solicit ”small gift” donations to raise money, and more importantly, avoid the imposition that often accompanies “big gift” donors. My solution is simple, Wikipedia needs to add a Flattr button.
ADD A FLATTR BUTTON
Instead of running these ads, which Gen Y laughs at, they should take a different approach. They shoud speak to Gen Y in their langauge.
They should add a Flattr button to the top right of their posts. It takes up much less space than an advertisement, is less intrusive, and people will be intrigued by it. Flattr isn’t a well known service (although it should be).
I imagine that the click through rate on a Flattr button would be much higher than the advertisements that Wikipedia is currently running. This is because the Flattr button is mysterious and unfamiliar. People want to know what this new social button is. They will click on it, set up an account, and then need a place to test it out.
There is your donation right there.
CONCLUSION
If Wikipedia is looking for small gift donations Flattr is the perfect partner. They should put a Flattr button on each page, help launch a new micro-payment platform, and in the process possibly raise some money without the annoyance of running ads.
Wikipedia could even keep the Flattr button up indefinitely. It is a less aggressive way of saying, “Hey, I like to provide you with this content, but could you help by contributing a little bit every so often.”
Edit Note: Also, by utilizing a button with a counter it identifies that others have given, thus influencing others to give. This is something that the current ads fail to achieve.
How To Add a Flattr Button To Your Self Hosted WordPress Site
Today I spent about an hour trying to figure out how I could add a Flattr button to my self hosted WordPress blog. I found a complicated post by WP Engineer, and Flattr provides a page where you can make buttons, but they didn’t provide any hard code for doing so. It wasn’t until I found their Javascript API that I was able to put together the code myself. I would check out all of the resources above to make sure you can’t use one of their methods before you attempt mine.
STEP ONE – ADD THE JAVASCRIPT
The first thing you need to do when adding a Flattr button to your self-hosted WordPress site is add this little snippet of code to your footer.
<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
(function() {
var s = document.createElement('script'), t = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.type = 'text/javascript';
s.async = true;
s.src = 'http://api.flattr.com/js/0.6/load.js?mode=auto';
t.parentNode.insertBefore(s, t);
})();
/* ]]> */
</script>
STEP TWO – UNDERSTAND THE BUTTON CODE
After you have added the above code to your footer to enable the javascript you can add the code that will output the button.
For the most part this code looks like regular html but it also has some random parameters in the middle. Here is what the code looks like before you populate the parameters.
<a class="FlattrButton" style="display:none;"
title=""
rev="flattr;uid:USER-ID;category:MEDIA-CATEGORY;tags:TAGS;"
href="PAGE-URL"
A DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTENT
</a>
STEP THREE – ADDING THE PARAMETERS
As you can see, we need to populate certain areas with the appropriate information. To do this we can use the built in WordPress template tags to output the various parameters needed. The tags I used are as follows.
- TITLE –> php the_title(); ?>
- URL –> php the_permalink(); ?>
- DESCRIPTION –> php the_excerpt(); ?>
- TAGS –> php
$posttags = get_the_tags();
if ($posttags) {
foreach($posttags as $tag) {
echo $tag->name . ‘, ’;
}
}
?>
The last template tag is a little complicated, but you can easily past it into the code. The final code for rendering the button on your posts or pages will look like this.
[sws_red_box box_size="500"] NOTE: You need to add your user id or username where it says USER-ID in the below code. [/sws_red_box]
<a class="FlattrButton" style="display:none;"
title="<?php the_title(); ?>"
rev="flattr;uid:USER-ID;category:text;tags:<?php
$posttags = get_the_tags();
if ($posttags) {
foreach($posttags as $tag) {
echo $tag->name . ', ';
}
}
?>;"
href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</a>
STEP THREE – ADD CODE TO TEMPLATE
Simply paste the final code into your template within the loop, and you will render a nice Flattr button to start earning you money.
You can view other parameters here if you would like to make the button look differently or change other parameters. Let me know if this works for your WordPress powered website, and if you have any suggestions of how to improve the code!
What’s Next For Apple? – Matt Mullenweg’s Predictions
I read this article on Matt Mullenweg’s blog, and I couldn’t have agreed more with his predictions. Click through and give the article a good read. I imagine every one of these predictions will come true within the next 5-10 years if Apple keeps up the great work in the absence of Steve Jobs.
Social Media Personality Types [SLIDESHOW]
I found this slideshow to be very insightful. I’m pretty sure I read an article documenting these social media personalities in the New York Times a coupe years back but I was unable to find the original source.
I’m sure everyone has friends that fit into each of these categories. I think from a social media marketing perspective this slideshow can really help marketers get to the essence of how their content is being shared, and thus help them cater their content to make it more shareable among the types of people they are targeting.
View more presentations from adrian chan
Marketing The Campus Companion Party Lab
As a strategic move The Campus Companion has decided to focus its marketing efforts primarily on the Party Lab. The Party Lab is TCCs sub-site dedicated to anything related to “partying” in college. This includes college party themes, drinks, attractions, events, and advice.
Why We Chose Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin
I’ve tried almost all of the major WordPress SEO plugins on the market and one of them seems to reign supreme. Yoast’s SEO.
The Depth and breadth of Yoast’s commitment to this plugin is remarkable, and he continues to give it away for free. Others have gone so far as to blatantly plagiarize his code in an attempt to commercialize it because they know they can’t come up with a better alternative. My reasoning here.
