As kids we learned to share things like chocolate and so forth. As adults it’s more like: my house, my car, and my yacht. However, now we’re learning to share again and it’s not just virtual items in the cloud, but tangible, material items as well.

‘My house’, for example. People are not always home, and can be away for a long time, looking for someone to sublease. Guests in the house! Couchsurfers on the sofa. The startup company Airbnb.de sends them over. There are sofas up for rent in 28,539 cities around the world. 9flats and Wimdu also secure travellers with these sorts of attractive stays.

Or, ‘my car’. Car sharing is not a new concept. Those who have been in traffic must have seen railway subsidiary Flinkster’s vehicles as well as Stadtmobil and others such as DriveNow, Greenwheels, car2go or teilAuto.

But what’s with Tamyca, Nachbarschaftsauto and Auto-Netzer? These sites allow individuals to rent out their own vehicles or rent a car. Is it worth the effort to loan a bike? Callabike is known, as is Nextbike.

Now things are getting more exotic. Job nomads and lonely creatives rent desks in coworking spaces. People are tired of working in internet cafes and prefer to have something like colleagues. There are coworking spaces in all of the major cities in the world. Fruit lovers can take a look at Mundraub.org to see whether there is a tree in their area which no one harvests.

Handymen sharing their tools at Frents: “See what friends and neighbors have, and share with them for free”. Currently there’s someone looking for ‘Supersize Me’ on DVD, a Nikon, car, travel game . . .

And of course, last but not least, sharing data is also popular. Photo, texts, videos, status updates and more are shared through Facebook and other social networks. It also occurs in corporate networks in the form of business reports and documents. And now even hard drives have gone “social”.

Backup-Plus-Seagate

Storage specialists Seagate are currently showing the IFA, the first hard drive with a social network feature: You can not only secure your home computer with Backup Plus, but also save photos from Facebook or Flickr locally. At the same time, content can be shared on social networks. Social storage, that fits the trend. Further manufacturers are standing at the starting blocks with similar products.

powered by