Posted by Lending Club :: October 27, 2010 @ 7:22 amIt's a fact of today's economy and society that consumer behavior has been evolving in unexpected ways ever since the Internet became available. We seem to be moving from an voracious consumerism to a consumption based on collaboration, sharing and community.
From the moment marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist started to become well known and became part of our day-to-day, a new movement of sharing and collaborating was born.
Collaborative Consumption is the phrase coined by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers to describe the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities. In their book, What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, Rachel and Roo go deep into the origins, reach and future of this movement.
Four emerging branches of this movement are peer travel reservations (airbnb), ride sharing (zimride), peer-to-peer lending (LendingClub in the US and Zopa in the UK) and co-working (The Hub) .
Listen to executives from these four companies discuss the rise of sharing and collaboration tonight. They will lead an interactive panel discussion in San Francisco, CA on Wedneday October 27.
The panel will explore how we are moving into a new realm of consumerism, one marked by trust between strangers, shared access instead of ownership, and the primacy of experience over “more stuff”.
It's going to be a thought-provoking, mind-bending, intimate conversation. Tickets are only $12 and there are only a few left.
In the mean time, I leave you with a cool short video showing what Collaborative Consumption is all about:
See you there.
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4 Comments
The net has changed consumerism for sure. For example, I'm am a
member of Makeupally, a site where women exchange makeup. It allows
to try out a huge amount of high end products without spending any
money. I also noticed that the net creates a lot of "lemmings". For
example, someone will post pics of a cute top they bought and all
of a sudden 10 people will buy. It works even better when a celeb
is seen wearing a specific shirt or carrying a certain purse; it
can cause that particular item to be sold out across the nation.
It's really insane and I have witnessed it firsthand.
Collaboration websites are being launched on nearly a daily basis.
It's unreal! It literally seems like everyday I turn my computer on
there is a new "Craigslist", "twitter", etc. Great post and nice
job noticing.
Collaborative lending seems like such a practical alternative to
traditional banks and lenders. I hope it becomes more widely
recognized and accepted in the near future.
Message board forums and online communities have definitely made
sharing and swapping more viable among individuals who are
interested in the same type of products. As a result surfers are
able to share their purchases (with photos) and even swap items
among each other. The internet has really revolutionized this
process.
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