I was recently at a classified publisher’s conference in Europe and got to talking with a fellow attendees about the impact of on-line services like Craig’s list, eBay and others. The impact in terms of “more” traditional and offline classified publications. When I mentioned the phenomenon of Freecycle, or at least the fact that is seems to be growing in usage in the UK and especially in London, it was the first time many people had herd of the service.
Freecycle is a service where users post up “stuff” they want to give away (for free of course) and then people who want it make a request. It is a great way to recycle (or get rid of stuff) that is still useful but that you don’t want and/or can’t be bother to auction on eBay (or you don’t have a way to sell via garage, flea market or car boot). My wife uses the Freecycle service in London all the time to get rid of things such as old rugs, a kids wendy house, light shades and a juicer.
On of the interesting things the “giver” gets to choose the “receiver” any way they want, which raises all sorts of fun questions on how best to choose (1st come vs. best request email etc). Some people write a request of why they deserve the item. Once you have given away something you then qualify to post up want-ads for items you wish to receive as well.Interestingly Freecycle uses Yahoo! Groups to power most of the interaction between “givers” and “receivers.”
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Uptailing and Downtailing, Freeconomy « A Fuller View // 19 February 2008 at 5:15 pm
[...] long tail. Also a sweet piece on the Freeconomy - well worth a read. And makes me think time to revisit Freecycle and get some stats on this service in terms of growth and economic [...]
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