Sharetown Named A 'leading In Local Future Star' By Bia/kelsey

Sharetown Named A 'leading In Local Future Star' By Bia/kelsey

Sharetown Named a ‘LEADING IN LOCAL Future Star’ by BIA/Kelsey

San Francisco, CA, December 9, 2012 - Sharetown has been named a LEADING IN LOCAL Future Star by BIA/Kelsey, in association with the upcoming conference, LEADING IN LOCAL: Interactive Local Media, Dec. 10-12, in San Francisco.

The Future Stars program recognizes early stage companies that are focused on developing the next wave of local digital media and marketing solutions. The program offers qualified startups access to digital media leaders, influencers and investors through a conference participation package that includes recognition during the conference and entry into the LOCAL Liftoff Awards competition. The winner of the LOCAL Liftoff Awards will be determined by conference attendee votes, and will be announced from the stage on Day 3 of the conference.

“The LEADING IN LOCAL Future Stars represent the future of interactive local media,” said Michael Boland, vice president, content and senior analyst, BIA/Kelsey. “We’re excited to be able to share the energy and entrepreneurship of the most innovative startups in the space with our conference attendees.”

Details about the LEADING IN LOCAL Future Stars program and the LOCAL Liftoff Awards are available at http://www.biakelsey.com/leadinginlocalsanfrancisco/future-stars.asp.

About Sharetown: Sharetown is a platform and marketplace that allows a fun, simple, safe, and convenient way to sell, rent, or share goods and services with family, friends, and neighbors in local communities. Sharetown also provides the platform to trusted local brands to capitalize on the recent fast growing trends around hyper local commerce and collaborative consumption and creates an entirely new "non-advertising" revenue opportunity for these brands. Leveraging existing social media, groups, and users Sharetown is empowering consumers and revolutionizing the connection between local brands and their end users/consumers. https://www.sharetown.com

About LEADING IN LOCAL: Interactive Local Media

BIA/Kelsey's LEADING IN LOCAL conferences are the definitive events on local digital advertising and marketing. LEADING IN LOCAL: Interactive Local Media attracts a global audience of executive-level decision makers from across the local media landscape, including companies engaged in local search, deals and group buying services, location-based services, local social media, traditional local media, classifieds and vertical media, as well as advertising and marketing agencies, local digital media suppliers and sector-focused investors and financial analysts. For more information, visit http://www.biakelsey.com/LeadingInLocalSanFrancisco.

About BIA/Kelsey

BIA/Kelsey advises companies in the local media space through consulting and valuation services, research, Continuous Advisory Services and conferences. Since 1983 BIA/Kelsey has been a resource to the media, mobile advertising, telecommunications, Yellow Pages and electronic directory markets, as well as to government agencies, law firms and investment companies looking to understand trends and revenue drivers. BIA/Kelsey’s annual conferences draw executives from across industries seeking expert guidance on how companies are finding innovative ways to grow. Additional information is available at http://www.biakelsey.com

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Sharetown Featured on FabuLESSly Frugal

The Sharetown Facebook App for Facebook Online Yard Sales and Facebook Buy and Sell Groups is being featured today at FabuLESSly Frugal, along with a $100 Target gift card giveaway. To see the whole article and to enter the giveaway go here: Sharetown Facebook App giveaway on FabuLESSly Frugal

The Sharetown Facebook App is LIVE

Our Facebook app is LIVE for all buying and selling Facebook Groups. Have questions? Check us out here: https://apps.facebook.com/sharetown/

Using Sharetown to Declutter

Jorja explains how to declutter using community selling on Facebook thru sharetown on the podcast, The Voluntary Life: http://www.thevoluntarylife.com/2013/07/118-decluttering-and-community-selling.html

We are currently in Alpha Testing of our Facebook App, if you'd like to be part of this testing please contact me: jorja at sharetown dot com

Sharetown Featured on Tech.co

Sharetown: Rent from Your Neighbors and Reduce Your Consumption

May 9, 2013 - Guest Author for the Las Vegas Edition

Think about your neighborhood (at home or work). How many people within an easily accessible radius have some kind of basic household, office, or event equipment that you need, but would rather not buy? Think about what you have on hand that’s really useful every once in a while, but just sits around a lot of the time.

Sharetown is an online platform where you can rent basic equipment or goods to and from neighbors, building resources and community connections at the same time. Users can log in through Facebook or Twitter to engage their existing networks (or just use an email address). The idea is to use that extra stuff to empower people and make them more connected where they already live with what they already have. People make money. People save money. Resources are used well.

For security, the rental fee and deposit requested are held in limbo on the platform until both parties confirm that they are satisfied with the exchange. Parties also have the ability to review each other.

Some social benefits may also be ushered in with Sharetown. Perhaps – for introverts who wouldn’t just strike up a conversation with their neighbor, or for existing local communities eager to engage more people in their area – Sharetown provides a simple, mutually beneficial method to branch out. Make new friends. Help existing friends. Build community.

Sharetown’s marketing director, Jorja Leavitt, said, “To me, this has been a beautiful answer to [the recession] in Las Vegas, so people can find security, not by having to sell off everything they own in order to survive, but be able to actually keep it and be able to make friends and a business out of it.” Sharetown’s Vegas-based team of five comes with the experience of already having built three successful technology companies together over ten years.

With about 25,000 users currently on the beta platform – mostly within a few square miles of each other in Las Vegas, Utah, and Idaho – and version 1 scheduled for release in May, Sharetown aims to grow through engaging existing “micro-communities.” Potentially aided even more by a streamlined social media validation function (i.e., renting more securely within your social networks), the new version will also let you purchase simple insurance policies for your stuff (like boats and jet skis, currently available for rent on Sharetown).

Plenty of the time, technology gets criticized for separating people from each other, but it can be used to bring them together, and make their lives better. Sharetown provides an avenue for anyone to do just that, whether just to make some extra cash or for the social benefit. So go ahead: be neighborly.

ShareTown was a showcased startup at our Tech Cocktail Week mixer in Las Vegas in February.

Guest author Kaitlynn Hendricks is a systems builder and a solution-focused, broad-scale economist. She works as a business developer in Washington, DC, where she spends her days pursuing, supporting, and telling stories about ventures in development and stewardship of globally conscious, locally focused networks of human, physical, and liquid capital. She enjoys timeless and occasionally avant-garde fashion, reading things that are just a little bit too complicated to really understand, relentlessly challenging the status quo, and exploring the city on her vespa. You can follow her on Twitter @sophistikaty.

FORBES predicts $3.5 Billion in "Sharing" this year

Tomio Geron wrote a very compelling argument in FORBES to why collaborative consumption will grow over 25% the next year. This new sharing economy looks to be disrupting the older consumption economy and the millennia's might be to blame.

"FORBES estimates the revenue flowing through the share economy directly into people’s wallets will surpass $3.5 billion this year, with growth exceeding 25%. At that rate peer-to-peer sharing is moving from an income boost in a stagnant wage market into a disruptive economic force. Technology has vastly improved on the newspaper classifieds that brokered the sweating of assets for a century...
...Millennials, the ascendant economic force in America, have been culturally programmed to borrow, rent and share. They don’t buy newspapers; they grab and disseminate stories a la carte via Facebook and Twitter. They don’t buy DVD sets; they stream shows. They don’t buy CDs; they subscribe to music on services such as Spotify or Pandora (or just steal it)." 

Click Here to read the article in it's entirety: 
Airbnb And The Unstoppable Rise Of The Share Economy . By, Tomio Geron

How to build trust in Collaborative Consumption

Great article today on business2community.com
The author explores the necessity of trust in order to have a successful collaborative consumption market place. He gives some timely tips:

5 Tips to Claim Your Identity in the Sharing Economy by Adam Spector

1. Presentation is key

He suggests that we be mindful of what photo we use, and how it will be perceived by strangers.

2. Aim for consistency

The next thing he suggests is to be consistent through all of our social media outlets. Using the same picture and keeping our profiles consistent helps build trust, and be able to show a clear representation of who we are.

3. Manage your Google footprint

He then adds it's important to be aware what people will find when they "google" you. If you can't control the content, you need to be able to address any questions if they come up.

4. You’re accountable now so act accordingly

Also, it's important to realize that many collaborative consumption sites offer the ability to leave reviews for it's members, and it will reflect badly on you if you do not do your best to resolve issues that come up time to time.

5. Verify your identity where possible

The last tip is to cross promote all of your social networks, so people can see you and verify you are who you say you are on several platforms. (Adam is the CEO & co-founder of Virtrue)

Thanks Adam for the tips... and his parting words ring true...  

"Remember – you are your data. Who you are online has real ramifications for what you can do in the real world. Transact and trust accordingly."

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/strategy/5-tips-to-claim-your-identity-in-the-sharing-economy-0405820#qzs2hOURxIDixT6d.99 

Big Deal in Car Sharing

Avis to Buy Zipcar for $500 Million. In what looks to be a huge win in the collaborative consumption space, Avis has announced that it will acquire Zipcar in the spring of 2013. Zipcar has been public since 2011. Read the whole article at TechCrunch.