The Sharing Economy Emerges
Peer to peer exchange of goods and services has skyrocketed way beyond craigslist.org and Couch Surfing. Now, access to goods and skills is becoming more important than ownership of them. And that has sparked a "Sharing Economy". Gartner Group researchers estimate that the peer-to-peer financial-lending market will reach $5 billion by 2013. Botsman says the consumer peer-to-peer rental market will become a $26 billion sector, and believes the sharing economy, in total, is a $110 billion-plus market. "Is this purely a warm-and-fuzzy kind of thing?" says Ann Miura-Ko, a venture capitalist at Floodgate Fund. "It's not. It's underutilized asset utilization." That is to say, sharing is becoming common place.
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