Through the internet you can share your car, your home, your office, and even your pets. Eilene Zimmerman wrote about the rise of the sharing economy:

• There are various models of business in the sharing economy. Companies such as Zipcar and Netflix own a product and they’ll lease it to you for a while. Others such as Airbnb and RelayRides don’t own anything, all they do is bring together two people who are willing to do business.
• This economy challenges the widely held assumption that computers make us more isolated. Most of these social, community based services would not have been possible without technology.
• It’s not just computers. The increasing urbanization of society has made it easier than ever to share things.
• ZipCar’s car sharing service is thought to be the first company to make a business out of sharing.
• Money isn’t always exchanged. On CouchSurfing you find a place to stay for a few nights, and in return the host gets your company.
• Other services offered by the sharing economy include Kichit, a company that finds you a chef who’ll cook you a dinner in your own kitchen, and ReDigi, a place to sell your digital music.

This is The Christian Science Monitor’s cover story and it covers a lot of ground in its analysis of this new trend. It also has many more examples of things that can be shared, and you may just find something useful to you if you read through the article here.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor