What has happened to the notice boards in supermarkets that offered unwanted kittens to good homes, lifts to work in the city centre for those willing to help pay for petrol and sewing machines that needed a bit of work? They have mostly migrated to internet auction sites like eBay.
But more and more of the informal buy/sell business is also finding its way online through niche websites that both make money for internet entrepreneurs and meet an altruistic urge that in marketing jargon is called collaborative consumption. "It's the idea that, as consumers, we waste a lot of the things we consume," said Will Emmett, 23, the business development manager of a Melbourne start-up courier site called MeeMeep. "You have a three-bedroom apartment but only use two rooms, or you might have a book that sits on your bookshelf that you might have read once and continues to sit there for 10 or 20 years when the useful life of that book is still going," Emmett said, urging Australians to list those wasted assets.
MeeMeep matches people going places with courier jobs they could do at the same time. The MeeMeep website engine does the matching, and Emmett and his chums take a cut of the price agreed between the provider and the person served. "We had someone in a surfing competition in Lorne who left their wetsuit in Melbourne. They needed their wetsuit in about four hours, and it got there," Emmett said when identifying a typical example of the website's 400 jobs undertaken so far.
"If you think that someone's going that way anyway, it's a waste not to act on it," he said. As with other sites, there is a green sheen to MeeMeep. Getting someone already in transit to take something along keeps further vehicles off the road, saves petrol, helps the environment and, importantly, gives a nice feeling of righteousness to both parties.
When Rebecca Mckechnie had her bicycle stolen while in training for a triathlon, she turned to a site called Openshed to appeal for the loan of a machine so she could compete in the Perth race. That is not something you could do on eBay.
Chris from Sydney's Bondi Beach, who also uses the Openshed website, is offering to hire out his 2.2-metre surfboard for 15 Australian dollars (16 US dollars) a day. For another 15 Australian dollars, you can borrow his bass guitar for the day too. What the more successful collaborative consumption websites have in common is secure payment systems and the Wi-Fi wizardry of smartphone and tablet applications.
Take the example of Divvy, a Sydney business matching motorists with homeowners who have parking spaces to rent. It is run by former banker Nick Austin and has around 1,000 customers and four staff. "People like convenience," Austin said. "They like to do things on the go, so you need a product that fits into that dynamic."
He reckoned that Divvy can help house owners shave 7 per cent off their annual mortgage payments and help Sydney drivers cut their parking costs by half. The big daddy of collaborative consumption websites is US-based Airbnb.com, a four-year-old company that last year was used to book 5 million nights of non-hotel accommodation in 192 countries around the world.
Sites have in common a smartphone application and a close linkage with social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. Austin said Facebook set the stage for a commercial community marketplace like Divvy because it accustomed people to sharing information and abiding by the rules of membership.
"I think Facebook has been a pioneer on that front to get people to connect online, and I think now it's encouraging people to connect offline," he said. "Not only does the technology make the service more efficient, but it helps people to move into this type of area because they feel they can trust the others on the platform."
The trend is for collaborative consumption sites to get ever more specific. For example, Sydney hosts the world's first surfboard-swapping site. FindAUniform, run by Sydney woman Bern Alexander, ticks all the boxes by providing an auction site for uniforms that would otherwise spend eternity in drawers.
It saves people money, delivers a service to schools and clubs, and gives new life to outgrown tracksuits, toggles, ballet shoes, cycling shorts and shirts with badges. Cleverly, Alexander has the money nexus with the club or school, which pays an annual fee and then gives members or parents a code to use the auction service for free.
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