Neighborly borrowing, over the online fence
The New York Times reports on how online start-ups are allowing people to rent out their belongings locally, for a small fee.
“The Roomba was mine for only 24 hours. I had rented it through a service called SnapGoods, which allows people to lend out their surplus gadgetry and various gear for a daily fee.
SnapGoods is one of the latest start-ups that bases its business model around allowing people to share, exchange and rent goods in a local setting. Among others are NeighborGoods and ShareSomeSugar. Other commercial services are springing up, too, including group-buying sites like Groupon, the peer-to-peer travel site Airbnb and Kickstarter, which allows people to invest small sums in creative ventures.
The common thread of all these sites is that access trumps ownership; consumers are offered ways to share goods instead of having to buy them.”
The final quote by Rachel Botsman, co-author of the forthcoming book, “What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption”, is worth reflecting on:
“This new economy,†says Ms. Botsman, “is going to be driven entirely by reputation, which is part of a new cultural shift — seeing how our behavior in one community affects what we can access in another.â€
