People divulge a lot of personal information online, create entire online identities, in the process leaving rows and rows of digital footprints.

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There were, in short, a lot more options for people who wanted to interact online.

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"A lot of companies just throw a catalog online and hope people buy stuff in cyberspace, " says Stan Dolberg, software strategies director at Forrester Research.

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Now we all share, we recommend people to each other, people put contracts online, and by sharing stuff we can get around a lot of problems.

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In fact, understanding how consumers respond to an online ad is a lot harder than simply tallying up the number of people who click on it.

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Armstrong says a lot of the strong content people are still not focused on online yet.

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Of course, in order to be truly effective, there needs to be a lot of people opening Flattr accounts, and lots of content online for them to Flattr.

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