Saturday, April 6, 2013

Dogs, power tools and bedrooms: Person-to-person sharing explodes

One of the biggest trends out there is sharing. People like Rob Gonzalez are making a living from renting out cars, clothes, rooms to vacationers, and even pets.

By Isolde Raftery, TODAY contributor

It has become the norm: People using online sites to share what they have ? in the tangible world ? with strangers.

Power tools, baby clothes for a special occasion, a personal loan ? even a dog for those who want to test pet ownership. No longer does one need to buy these items, clogging up storage.?

Nor is this a quaint notion:?Person-to-person transactions, popularized by early innovative sites such as Craigslist.org, has exploded into a $26 billion-a-year industry.

Chief among sharers are the ?super sharers,? including Rob Gonzalez, who makes a living renting out a room in his Brooklyn condo via airbnb.com and teaching a class he calls ?How to live rent-free in New York City.? He posts the class on the website Skill Share.

Gonzalez, a 35-year-old actor who was once a real estate agent, uses Relay Rides to find individuals renting their cars.

"I share my home and I share my knowledge, but there's a lot of stuff I don't have, so while I share a lot of stuff, people also share with me," Gonzalez said.

April Rinne, Chief Strategy Officer at Collaborative Lab, a company based in San Francisco and Australia that specializes in collaborative consumption, summed up the growing phenomena: "We can trade, swap, barter, rent, lend, share, etc., but doing so in a way that mimics what we've been doing throughout history but is relevant in today's Facebook age."

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2a60ce3c/l/0Llifeinc0Btoday0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C0A50C1760A34710Edogs0Epower0Etools0Eand0Ebedrooms0Eperson0Eto0Eperson0Esharing0Eexplodes0Dlite/story01.htm

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