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When you sign up for Flattr, a social micropayments service, you dedicate a flat fee per month to the site. As you're surfing the web, you can click "Flattr" buttons next to a blog post, song, or podcast to put your money where your "likes" are. At the end of each month, your flat fee is evenly divided amongst the creators you've chosen.

communities of creators (podcasters, citizen journalists, open source 3d printer hackers) are increasingly adopting Flattr as a virtual tip jar. The site's still small--70,000 users. The amounts are small, too--users pledge an average of 3 euros a month and click just a handful of times, with each click averaging half a euro in value. But as cofounder Linus Olsson told Fast Company today after his SXSW panel, the cultural impact of this kind of crowdfunding is growing.

"Money's just another tool to help people do what you think is important."