MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It was always possible to live in a place like Washington without owning a car, it just wasn't easy. You could ride a bike or take the Metro for most things, but you still sometimes needed your own wheels to take care of all those random chores. Then, came a first glimpse of a different, sharing-based economy. Today, you can tap into a network of cars parked all over the city using car sharing services like ZipCar.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIYou log onto a website, pick up the car and pay for it by the hour or you can borrow a public bicycle at hundreds of stations around the region using Capital Bikeshare. The operative word is borrow, not own, a new kind of business and a new way of consuming goods where owning stuff isn't as important as being plugged into a smart network.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIAlready web-based communities and businesses let you borrow or rent out all sorts of goods and services from lawn mowers to books to vacant apartments. Here to talk about this new sharing economy, in our Washington studio, is Jennifer Golbeck. She's a professor at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Jenn Golbeck, good to see you again.

MS. JENNIFER GOLBECKYeah, happy to be back.

NNAMDIJoining us from studios in San Francisco is Lisa Gansky. She is an entrepreneur and author of "The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing." Over the last two decades, Lisa Gansky has been an executive and investor in more than 20 mobile and Internet companies. Lisa Gansky, thank you for joining us.

MS. LISA GANSKYOh, thank you, I'm delighted to be here.

NNAMDIWe're asking our listeners, if you'd like to join the conversation, to call us at 800-433-8850. Do you use sharing-based businesses like ZipCar, 800-433-8850? And what was your experience? The idea of physically owning stuff is deeply baked into our cultural and economic DNA. For most of the last century, the American dream has been about owning your own home, owning your car, owning a lawn mower and a powerful drill to keep up that home you bought.

NNAMDIAnd our businesses have dedicated themselves to selling us that stuff. Now, some people think we are transitioning to a new phase in our consumer culture and our business. Jenn, the first hints of this change might have come from websites like Couchsurfer.org. When did you first notice it?

GOLBECKThat's right. It was probably three or four years ago that I started seeing some of these things come online and I approached it from a position of trying to understand how people trust one another and interact online. And these are sites where trust becomes really important. Sites like Couchsurfing, people open up their house, they post something online with pictures and say, if you want to come crash on my couch, sleep on an air mattress in my kitchen, go ahead and come over. And it was free, it was this community of people that came about and strangers would come in and say, I'd love to stay at your house. And they'd come over and camp out on your floor.

NNAMDILisa, people have always managed to get around here in Washington, D.C. without a car, but it got a lot easier with the advent of car sharing services like ZipCar. The traditional car rental business model involved you physically going to a Hertz or an Avis rent a car location, paying by the day. You say ZipCar is a great example of a different kind of business model. What is a mesh business?

GANSKYWell, a mesh business -- the mesh for me is really a fundamental shift in our relationship to the people and the things in our life. And it's a shift in the relationship, both at a community level and also from a business perspective. So, for example, if we take your notion of -- or reference to classic Avis car rental, typically that was -- the model was lots of cars in a location that was convenient for them. And basically, you have to go to the airport or someplace like that to get one of their cars. And then go back and return it again to that spot.

GANSKYThe idea of car sharing -- and so one of the things that came out of a ZipCar model, for example, that's different and mesh-y and I should probably answer your question which is what makes a mesh business. And that's really taking something that, rather than owning it, we're providing access. So you have access to goods, services or talent just when you want it or need it. And you pay for only what you use.

GANSKYSo for example, many of us who own cars, and I own a car by way of confession, these stats are that in the U.S. and Western Europe -- actually in North America and Western Europe, eight percent of the time, on average, is how much you and I, you know, normal people running around in these parts of the world, use their car...

NNAMDII'm embarrassed to say this…

GANSKY...on a -- in an average day, right? So that means 92 percent of the time, the second most costly thing that we own sits. And not only that, but when I started to do research and think about it further, we organize our cities around cars, not people. We -- it -- cars take up lots of parking on the street, it certainly eliminates the ability to make people feel fabulous about riding their bike in the street. But it also -- car parks, you know, you pull in, in the morning and you pull out in the evening.

GANSKYSo the whole idea of car sharing is sort of like imagine having a restaurant where none of the tables turned. That's the sort of the same phenomenon. So in this case, we're looking at the -- what I like to call, waste. Waste is unused value, things that we own that actually have a lot of value, talent, tools, homes, cars, boats, that when they're not used their actually being wasted.

GANSKYAnd so that the opportunity is to connect them into a mesh network, into a way in which other people can access what individuals have or what companies have so that factories or truck fleets or a variety of things that also companies own, can be accessed and the available inventory, if you will, or the capacity can be accessed by people, not just those in the company or those in the family. And so ZipCar versus Avis is -- it's a network of cars that are kind of sprinkled around the city.

GANSKYBecause one of the fundamental things that came out of research around car sharing was that many people would be willing to car share if they could walk one to two blocks from wherever they are. But they're not really...

NNAMDIGot to have them to go to the airport, yeah.

GANSKYYeah. And so, basically, ZipCar's model is they own the fleet just like Avis, but they sprinkle it around the city and that they focus on or campuses, areas where they know that there's enough density to actually make it make sense, that there's therefore enough people who could actually share. And then there's another sort of what I like to call version 2.0 of that business model...

NNAMDII was about to say, let's take it up a notch.

GANSKY...you know, it -- so you -- because in your opening, you said a lot which really impressed me, but also one of the things that you kind of hinted at is ZipCar owns the fleet and 2.0 is what we call peer-to-peer car sharing. So if your neighbor's car is basically in use, eight percent of the car and people were willing to car share with a car that's close to them, one or two blocks. The car that's available and near you is your neighbor's. And so 2.0 is basically borrow your neighbor's car, rent your neighbor's car and these services are popping up.

GANSKYIn 2010, WhipCar in the U.K. launched and it took them six months to do what ZipCar did in six years in terms of getting a 1,000 active cars into the network. So people who are putting their cars as owners are getting between $250 and $750 a month and the neighbors are actually using their cars. And interestingly, from both the company in the U.S. called RelayRides and one in the U.K., WhipCar, they both told me that their independent feedback from their customers is that both sides of the equation, the borrowers and the owners, feel that they're actually helping the other one. You know, they're supporting the other person and creating this really nice community.

NNAMDIWell, we'll have to see what our listeners think about that. Would you rent your car out for a few hours to a stranger? Call us, 800-433-8850. Send us a Tweet @kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org or simply go to our website kojoshow.org, join the conversation there. I mentioned at the beginning, Jenn Golbeck, that, yes, I don't use my car that much. It sits for probably 22 or 23 hours a day. And we just heard Lisa talk about a number of websites. Another one is Getaround.com. They're designing ways for me to rent out my car when I'm not using it. What do you think of so-called social car sharing?

GOLBECKI think social sharing in any of these spaces takes the right kind of people. I personally would not lend my car out to a stranger because, you know, one, I want to have access to it when I need it. If I need to take my dogs to the vet all of a sudden or something, I want it there. But the real issue underneath all of this is how much you trust these strangers to access your things. So when we started off talking about things like Couchsurfing which was this free, kind of, community based space where you could rent out a room in your house or provide access to a room in your house.

GOLBECKThe reason that that system really worked is because a community built up around it. There was a set of community standards that these Couchsurfers expected people to behalf according to and they would review one another and they would put up information. And if someone was not behaving according to those community standards, they were sort of prevented from participating. That's a great thing and that makes a lot of communities work. When there's a set of standards that evolve and people are expected to adhere to them.

GOLBECKBut when you start having to pay -- so when I'm paying to stay in your house instead of you just letting me stay there for free, all of a sudden, I have this set of expectations that I'm kind of entitled to something for what I've paid you. It's not -- we're in a community and this is a participation thing. It's, I've paid you and now you owe me a service. And people start behaving in really different ways there. So there's a lot of questions about how people will act in these situations, how they'll treat your car if you lend it out.

GOLBECKWill they treat it like a rental or are they going to treat it like they're borrowing it and you're doing them a favor? We don’t really understand how those things are going to work. And frankly, I think they'll work differently for different people, some people will behave.

NNAMDIOne website you mentioned, Couchsurfing.org, one website that’s gained a lot of attention, both good and bad, is called AirBnB. This site allows you to rent out your apartment or extra room or to rent someone else's room when you travel. First, Lisa, how does it work?

GOLBECKWell, let's say you have a vacation home and you want to, when you're not using it, put it up and make it available for other people. You could -- you basically, you know, take photos, tell a story about the area that it's in, you know, some sort of standard marketing stuff so that somebody knows what to expect, what they're looking for and there's some assertions like how many bedrooms and bathrooms and things like that.

GOLBECKYou put it up, you specify a price per night or per week or per month and people who are looking -- let's say, you know, I'm coming to Maryland or to Washington, D.C. and I spot your place, I decide I'm going to stay there. They -- I can book it through you. You can set it up as an owner with all sorts of kind of stipulations. So you could say, you have to -- I have to talk to you first and you have to decide whether I seem like somebody you want to rent to. Or you can just make it super easy because, hey, you don’t -- it's not really a place that you care that much about.

GOLBECKIt's a little cabin in the middle of wherever and your idea is to just, you know, make money from it when you're not using it and you're not that attached to what happens there. So you know, there's all sorts of ways that you can sort of slide the dial and to make it more challenging for somebody to rent it. But -- or optimize for making the most money possible. And I should say that AirBnB -- so the way that it works is there's, again, owners and borrowers, it's what we call a community based commerce marketplace or it's a two-sided marketplace.

GOLBECKSo you have owners and you have borrowers just like carsharing. But in this case, you know, somebody says, okay, I'll take two nights. Kojo, I'm going to come to your place and thanks a lot and here's the money. Different -- that's how AirBnB works. They had a big problem because somebody basically rented someone's home and completely trashed it. And there's more to the story, but the consequence produced AirBnB now essentially being an insurance company for themselves and ensuring the owners. In the case of RelayRides...

NNAMDIWell, let me stay with AirBnB for a second.

GANSKYOkay.

NNAMDIBecause it's my understanding -- and, Jen, you can talk about this. AirBnB has something called a reputation bank, which encourages people to post reviews and warnings about good and bad uses. What do you think?

GOLBECKThat's right. So, I think that this is a really important thing to have in these sites and it's something that we've seen kind of from the beginning of this peer-to-peer interaction. And eBay is a great example, right? EBay's feedback mechanism there, it's people selling things to one another. And eBay has had to step in in very much the same way that Lisa was just talking about, where now they have all these sorts of protections for both sides.

GOLBECKBut one thing that we've done a lot of study on is how these reputation mechanisms work in things like eBay and same for AirBnB or for CouchSurfing, even in the free sites, because that gives you the ability to trust people or not. The problem that comes up in these sometimes is, one, people are a little bit hesitant to give feedback about somebody else, unless there's something really egregious that went on, because they feel sort of bad about it and they don't want to be a jerk.

GOLBECKBut the sites themselves, the sites like eBay or AirBnB, have an incentive to discourage negative feedback because they want the community to look like a place that's trustworthy, right? If you went on to eBay and everybody had negative feedback and it looks like they were 20 percent good transactions as opposed to 98 percent good transactions, you'd be less likely to use the eBay service. Same thing for AirBnB or any of these sites.

GOLBECKIf there's a lot of negative feedback, it looks like an untrustworthy place and it discourages people from interacting there. So the sites sort of have this incentive to make sure that people don't say too many bad things. And that's a real problem on eBay now. Sellers, for example, can't say anything bad about buyers. There's no option to leave negative feedback for buyers anymore.

GANSKYRight.

GOLBECKGo ahead, Lisa.

GANSKYSorry, I was going to say, I completely agree, Jen. I think that, you know, one of the challenges -- so reputation and fundamental in disclosure. If we look in how we build trust, we're sort of -- if we look in how we build trust amongst friends and communities, physical communities where we live together, you know, disclosure is part of it. You can see someone. You kind of know who they're related to or how they're connected. You can see them come and go.

GANSKYThere's some more -- you have more peripheral vision, in a way, than you do online. And so, with eBay, which is -- Jen's exactly right. All of their reputation skew in the 90s. And so, there's gaming. There's gaming. They're not from malicious reasons but exactly for what Jen is saying, which is, you know, people don't want to be a jerk. And so, something has to be like an AirBnB debacle for them to come, you know, come out and out somebody on the mess.

NNAMDIGot to interrupt you for a second because we do have to take a short break and there are a lot of callers waiting to join this conversation. The number is 800-433-8850. Would you rent your car out for a few hours to a stranger? 800-433-8850. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org. We're talking about the new sharing economy. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWe're discussing the new sharing economy with Lisa Gansky, author of "The Mesh." She's an entrepreneur. I should say, the book is "The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing." Lisa is an entrepreneur. Over the last two decades, she's been an executive and investor in more than 20 mobile and Internet company. She joins us from studios in San Francisco. In our Washington studio is Jennifer Golbeck, professor at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland.

NNAMDIWe've been taking your calls at 800-433-8850. And there are a lot of you who are on the line. So I'll go straight to the phones. Here is Linda in Alexandria, VA. Linda, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. Linda, you need to stop listening to the radio and start listening on your telephone and join the conversation. Linda, are you there?

LINDAYes, I'm here. Hi.

NNAMDIHi, Linda.

LINDAI had never heard of couch surfing before until my 20-year-old nephew decided to make it his little political statement during his sophomore year at college. His father wouldn't pay for dorm living and wanted him to live at home. And so, instead, my very good nephew spent the night at different people's houses every night, couch surfing.

NNAMDIAnd what did you think?

LINDAI was actually initially nervous. I was worried about his safety and it turned out to be the best experience for him. He was a quiet good kid and he ended up making friends and he, again, stayed at different places with that website. He reassured me that the rating system was good and he would be safe. And he would donate, I think, $10 a night to his favorite charity just to -- the money his dad gave him to make a political point that it was a good system. He actually first went to Europe for six weeks and couch surfed in Germany with different people there and had a wonderful time, even though I bought him an American Youth Hostel membership card.

NNAMDIWhat did you get from his, what you characterized, little political statement, Linda?

LINDAI think it sounds like making his -- you know, some people, you know, do, you know, affiliate with people and take risks that aren't good and he's -- this was his risk taking that actually turned out to be a safe experience.

NNAMDIOK. Thank you very much for your call. Care to comment on that level of trust, Jen Golbeck?

GOLBECKIt sounds like he's exactly the kind of person that couch surfing community wants to have involved. It can be a very, very safe thing to do. And there's a relatively low number of problems reported with couch surfing, again, because they have this community standards and the people participating really try to respect that. So, it's one of the safer ways to do things. It's a lot different than hitchhiking, for example.

NNAMDILinda, thank you very much for your call. We move on to Newt (sp?) in Stafford, VA. Newt, you're on the air, go ahead please.

NEWTWell, I have a question about -- how does the carsharing impact your insurance?

NNAMDIGood question. Lisa?

GANSKYYeah, sure. With -- in the case of, for example, the peer-to-peer car sharing, there is actually -- it's a special thing that was created in the U.S. with State Farm for RelayRides and in the U.K. with the Lloyd's of London. And essentially the borrower gets a micro-policy that's generated each time they use a car that's in their network. And so, if you have insurance and I have insurance, actually what the primary insurance that covers us is the policy that's generated from the platform itself.

GANSKYNow I can't speak for all carsharing around the world, but in those two instances, and with Zipcar, the insurance happens in sort of this micro-transaction. And the micro-transaction is actually probably one of the components of this measure share businesses in general. Yeah, so that what happens. And one of the things just as a comment, I car share myself. But when the guy told me that he was going to -- the guy who started the peer-to-peer RelayRides told me what he was going to do, I said if I were you, I'd get the policy and then take my car and drive it into a pole and see if they actually cover you because you don't want that issue happening with a real customer.

GANSKYAnd so, as a result, you know, they have tested and have basically a million dollars worth of coverage for any instance. The other thing, as Jen alluded to and I think this will continue to come up, in all sorts of ways over decades and centuries, as communities expand trust beyond like when we move to money from being able to just be face-to-face with each other it required a whole lot of trust and third parties validating certain things. You know, we came from an economy or we're still deeply in an economy that's debt based where credit reports are the indicator of what makes somebody worthy.

GANSKYAnd so, one of the things that I think we're looking at here is as we expand the communities of people who are let's say early adapters of trust for share based services, how can we -- what will replace the credit report in a share based economy? And so, we're seeing some examples, for example, disclosure is really important. So, if I break something in Kojo's house when I go there, or I borrow your car and I get in a small accident.

GANSKYIf I come back and deliver the car without disclosing that, not only is my credit or is my reputation dinged, but also they actually charge me. If I disclose it, I'm not charged. So, there's also, you know, kind of points and currency that's being generated to also create the kind of behavior that we expect and want to have.

NNAMDISo basically if you did it to my car, your reputation would be a little more than dinged.

NEWTWell...

GANSKYDinged.

NNAMDIThank you very much. Newt, thank you very...

NEWTThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIYes.

NEWTKojo, I take issue with trust. Trust doesn't pay damages, it doesn't pay liabilities.

NNAMDIWell, I'm glad you brought that up. Newt, I'm glad you brought that up because I do have another caller on the line who had a slightly different experience with auto insurance. So, if you'll permit me, I'll put you on hold and go to that other caller who is David in Mount Airy, MD. David, you're on the air, go ahead please.

DAVIDYes, I got one comment first, and then I talk about insurance. I'm also a member of homeexchange.com and I exchange my home and also automobile. And my insurance company has no problem with that. They say it's just like giving your car to a trusted friend or a family member. However, I once rented an RV vehicle to another individual and they had the same insurance company that I did. And when my insurance -- he contacted his insurance to say that he was going to rent my RV. When he did that, my company called me and said we're going to cancel your insurance.

NNAMDIReally?

DAVIDYes.

NNAMDIWhat do you have to say?

DAVIDNow, this was a few years ago, so I'm not sure if that's still the policy. But, you know, I certainly remember that happening.

NNAMDICare to comment on that, Jen?

GOLBECKWell, that's interesting and this brings up an issue that I had raised with you during the break which is, there's really two kinds of these sharing services. One is where the businesses own everything, like Zipcar. They own the cars and they take on all the liability. And one is where it's going peer-to-peer. We have a model in the economy for businesses owning things and lending them out to people even if they are doing it in a new way, like Zipcar is. We don't really have the model set up yet for this sort of peer-to-peer lending.

GOLBECKAnd we see this all the time when the Internet enables us to do new things, right? People don't know quite how to interact with it, businesses don't know quite how to interact with it. So, I think that this is an instance of that. That the insurance company isn't quite sure how to handle an individual renting things out to somebody else. And so, it can cause problems and also confusion within the insurance company itself. You know, I think if Lisa is right in her predictions and I think she is that eventually we're going to see insurance companies much more explicitly being able to deal with these sorts of issues.

NNAMDIDavid, did you get the impression that it was lack of familiarity that caused your insurance company to get nervous?

DAVIDI'm not sure what caused them. They just said that if you, you know, we're insuring your vehicle for you and your family or whoever else, but we won't keep your insurance if you're going to rent the vehicle.

NNAMDILisa Gansky, what do you say to that?

GANSKYWell, you know, one of the things that I've come across -- and this whole area is -- I'm loving that people are calling in with comments, because it's hard as an author to get that. You know, one of the things that's really of huge interest, in order for this to scale, in order for more and more people to participate, you know, we need new structure. And I think that insurance companies are sticking to, you know, low-risk, high-profit models just like banks. And that these companies are losing our trust anyway for all sorts of reasons.

GANSKYBut they are going to realize and they are I think realizing now that people want to do different sorts of things. And so, you may be familiar with, for example, peer-to-peer loans through Prosper and the Lending Club, and Zopa and companies like this, where, you know, billions of dollars internationally have -- basically it's if I have $1,000 sitting in my CD, I'm making essentially nothing right now in credit, in interest.

GANSKYBut if I lend it to five different people, you know, who are on this service and want to pay back their college loans or want to start a business, on average, I'm making somewhere between 9 and 9.5 percent interest. And so, these are examples where the peer-to-peer side is actually giving -- allowing us to take advantage of the fact that we're more connected to each other than we've ever been before.

GANSKYBut it's also creating a whole lot of stirring the pot for these old institutions. And so, I think that insurance companies are testing all sorts of models as are, you know, other sorts of manufacturers, like going back to the car example. Ford created an interesting relationship recently with Zipcar because the data in the U.S. and Europe shows that teenagers are learning to drive much later, and also that they're tending to not want to own cars.

NNAMDIAnd GM also announced this month that it was getting in on the action through a partnership with the company you mentioned earlier called RelayRides.

GANSKYYes. Actually that's -- so both of those are really interesting to me because, one, you're going to start to see now a much wider kind of collection of folks getting involved and hearing about these opportunities. The GM partnership was actually for OnStar because OnStar cars actually have a network already in the you know built into the car that would allow them to very easily be part of this kind of RelayRide service. And so, imagine like a taxicab, you can have on duty, off duty on your car and make it available for when you're not using it. So, that's sort of a model. Again, as you pointed out, Kojo, it doesn't work for everyone.

NNAMDIDavid, thank you for your call. Newt, thank you also for your call. Jen, the stuff we own as part of our lifestyles and our personalities, if I own a Prius or my bookshelves have a copy or Orwell's "Animal Farm" that sort of makes a statement of who I am. Doesn't it? And if we are sharing all of our stuff, does that also imply adjusting how we see ourselves?

GOLBECKI think so. So, you're absolutely right. And we see this in all of these sort of visible projections of ourselves, whether it's the kind of cars we have, the books that we have out on our shelves. The way we portray ourselves in social media, we're really trying to show how we are. So, there is good and bad things that can come out of sharing that. One is that it can give us a mechanism to better connect to people who are like us, right?

GANSKYIf we put our books out there and make them available, we're connecting to other people who like the same books and we start to feel like we are part of a community. On the other hand, possessing that thing, possessing that book or possessing the car all the time and being able to point to it in the parking lot, that becomes not as much the way that we express our identity. So, it's a little bit of this issue of individuality and your identity versus being part of a community that has a same identity.

NNAMDIHere is Palmer in Loudoun County, VA. Palmer, your turn.

PALMERHello. Thank you so much for taking my call. I just wanted to ask, with the peer-to-peer carsharing, it seemed possible that while not probable but definitely possible that a criminal organization or even a dedicated criminal could completely fabricate their personal identity to use the peer-to-peer to easily take...

NNAMDIPalmer, here is this email we got from Jonathan. And, Lisa, you can respond to both Palmer's suggestion and the email from Jonathan who says, "I'm trying AirBnB for my trip to Europe on November 9th. So far, it seems okay. But after paying the owner, he seems to have disappeared. It makes me uneasy about the service. I don't have a reason to mistrust him, but he's only got a few reviews. What is my recourse if it turns out that I get to the house and it's not what I thought I was paying for? Either way, I'm happy to let your show know about my experience." Jonathan, we'd be happy to hear from you also. In the meantime, Lisa Gansky, what advice would you give to Jonathan?

GANSKYWell, I would say actually that there are these platforms, AirBnB. Another one is Roomorama and CouchSurfing, as three examples. And I choose those because they're all peer-to-peer home services basically. You're purchasing nights in someone's home. And each of the three of those have very different, what I refer to as social operating systems. They -- you know, the expectation in the way in which the actual transaction takes place varies.

GANSKYAnd so with AirBnB, you know, I'm actually less familiar with that one than some of the other ones at the moment and so apologize. I can't give you a rigorous answer except to say that I would give an alert to the AirBnB help desk and let them know that you're concerned, you know, that the person has gone dark. But I think...

NNAMDIHow would it work under say Roomorama?

GANSKYWell Roomorama, they actually -- the two people who started Roomorama, which is based in New York and is a pretty impressive platform in and of itself, they were doing it themselves using Craigslist because they had an expensive apartment in New York and were going to Asia a lot for business. And they came up with a mechanism because they realized early on that somebody who's exactly in Palmer's situation -- or was that Palmer or the other gentleman email? Sorry.

NNAMDIIt is Palmer.

GANSKYIn any case, the...

NNAMDIAll right. I'm sorry, it was the emailer.

GANSKYYeah, that's -- I -- yeah.

NNAMDIJonathan.

GANSKYJonathan, thank you. That Jonathan same circumstance was anticipated. And so what they do is if I'm going to rent a place and I pay, I actually pay into a Roomorama kind of escrow. And Roomorama verifies that -- to the owner that I've paid and they validate -- they give me all the information, the codes and stuff for me to get to the place. And then once I get there they follow up with me or I immediately put -- type in a code that unlocks the money to the owner if indeed the place is as promised.

GANSKYSo if it's supposed to be a two-bedroom, one-bath on the Westside and I get there and it's, you know, a total farce, I can basically not unlock the money. Because once -- what they obviously discovered is with peer-to-peer once the money transfers it's very difficult to get it back. In the case of Roomorama I'm not sure if they move all of the money -- did you pay the full amount or just a deposit?

NNAMDII don't know. He sent us an email so he's not available.

GANSKYOh, the email, that's true, so he's not here. Sorry.

NNAMDIPalmer...

GANSKYSo I would say that, you know, some of the mechanisms are still being worked out. And as a consumer, as somebody who's looking for and looking at these different platforms, I would recommend to find one that makes you feel comfortable in the way in which they transact.

NNAMDIAnd Palmer, thank you for your call. Jen, you were going to say?

GOLBECKYeah, I actually wanted to follow a little bit on Palmer's point about organized crime or potential fraud through these systems.

NNAMDISure.

GOLBECKBecause again to go back to the early days of e-Bay this was one of the big concerns. And there were cases of this where people would have a lot of small transactions on e-Bay and do them really well and build up these high positive feedback ratings, and then sell one big item for a lot of money, get the money, not send it and escape with the money. And as I mentioned before, eBay and PayPal have really now evolved to have this whole middle system where people can complain about things, say well, the item's not as it was promised. And they try to resolve it and can take money away from people if they haven't delivered what was expected.

GOLBECKBut one of the problems that comes up with that, in responding to what Lisa said, you know, if I put this money in an escrow and I'm going to come and rent your apartment. And I get there and it's not exactly as you described it, you know, where do we draw the line there? Where do I get some of that money back? Where do you get none of the money?

GOLBECKAs a frequent eBay seller I run into these problems all the time, where I'll put something up online, somebody'll buy it and then they'll say, well, it's not really what I expected. And I'll say, it's exactly like I listed it. And then we have this big back and forth and sometimes PayPal takes the money away from me. And it's this really frustrating process both for buyers and sellers sometimes.

GOLBECKSo I don't think this dooms the system, but it's one of those things that we still again haven't really figured out how to deal with in this space.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue this conversation on the new sharing economy. If you've called stay on the line, we'll try to get to your calls. Otherwise send us a Tweet at kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org simply go to our website kojoshow.org and join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWe're talking about the new sharing economy with Jennifer Golbeck. She's a professor of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland and Lisa Gansky who is an entrepreneur and author of the book "The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing." And, Lisa, in this book "The Mesh" you talk about a company called Crushpad which uses this idea of a mesh business model in a very interesting way. It apparently lets customers or consumers make their own vintage of wine in small batches so I could conceivably make a Nnamdi Pinot Noir if I was so inclined. Please explain.

GANSKYSure, of course. And this is the perfect time of year because the crush is on so you should let us know if you want the Pinot. But, let's see, the way that it works, so for most of us, and me included, you know, if you enjoy a glass of wine now and then and you have a fantasy about perhaps making wine, learning to make wine and having your own Pinot or label, that's a very expensive proposition.

GANSKYAnd so what Crushpad is is they basically took the idea of -- there's a lot of people who actually have an interest in participating in a harvest or learning more about wine and how it's made or even, you know, getting involved in hands dirty making wine. But those people, you know, aren't going to go out and buy a winery. And so what they did is they played off of -- you know, wine being a very old industry they played off of something that's very inherent in wine, which is they tend to share bottling facilities and crush facilities and all sorts of things, different vineyards around the world.

GANSKYAnd so in this case what they did was they basically said, we have our own literal crush pad. We're going to buy really nice grapes and we're going to invite lots of people who have this interest and passion for making wine to come in and to participate at any level that they want. So they could -- you know, and they have all the pieces that a winery would have but they basically -- like a gym membership they distribute the cost across all of the people who have access.

GANSKYSo, you know, a gym for most of us is a place that has a lot of pretty expensive equipment and people who have talent for being fitness experts...

NNAMDIGotcha.

GANSKY...and none of us are going to have that in our homes -- or most of us aren't going to have it in our homes, so we pay for access. And it's quite a similar model in this case applied to making wine.

NNAMDIAnd everybody just brings theirs over and we all make wine together.

GANSKYThere you go.

NNAMDIJen, in a mesh ecosystem the customer can personalize what we need and want but does that end up threatening the way we see brands?

GOLBECKOh, that's a really interesting question. You know, I think we've sort of been moving this way anyway. With all of this move towards social media, which has really happened say since 2004 or 2005, people have really been getting on there. We've kind of been learning how to make our own brands, right, to brand our self and to portray ourselves to people and to put our brand on things we're sharing. So if I Tweet a link to something that you have, I'm not Tweeting that you said it, right. I'm Tweeting that I said it so my little stamp is on the fact that I'm sharing that.

GOLBECKAnd we hear a lot of good and bad things about how people are putting themselves out there in social media. So I think that actually has sort of stepped us towards this idea of personal brands that we may run into here.

NNAMDIWe got a Tweet suggestion for a Kojo wine from atperkinsms called the Kojo Kabernet -- Kabernet with a K. Kojo Kabernet. Here now is Mindy on Capitol Hill in Washington. Mindy, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MINDYWell, good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to just bring up something that no one has been talking about. And that is what a lifestyle changer it is if you live up here and you shed your two cars and you start using Zipcars when you need them. It's been an incredible change for me and my husband. We're certainly much more relaxed. Our expenses are much lower. We were paying insurance and maintenance on two cars that we were barely using. Sometimes couldn't remember where they were parked after not using them for two weeks. And using Zipcars has just changed everything.

NNAMDIHow long have you been using Zipcars?

MINDYAt least four years. At least four years. And we probably use it twice a month. Maybe a little bit more around the Holidays. Generally every other Sunday a big block of time to go do big food shopping, because we can walk to most everything else here. We're lucky in that we both have jobs where we can use Metro to get back and forth. But we're so much more relaxed (unintelligible) ...

NNAMDIGiven Zipcars and the bicycle rentals that we now have here, Jen Golbeck, are we seeing a cultural shift in how people see their mobility?

GOLBECKI think in urban areas where you have this luxury of being able to take Metro to work and being able to walk to the grocery store, this is actually something people have been doing for a long time. There aren't a lot of families in Manhattan or downtown D.C. that own two cars, right. And I think that's the right thing. So I don't know so much that's it's a cultural shift into giving things up now that they're sharing. It just makes it a lot easier to justify giving those things up.

NNAMDIMindy, thank you very much for your call. And, Jen, you mentioned urban. Here is Travis in College Park, Md. with a question about that. Travis, your turn.

TRAVISOh, thanks, Kojo. I just had a quick question. I'm at the University of Maryland right now and I was actually just watching them change a tire on a Zipcar here. And I had a question. I'm originally from South Dakota and I was wondering if the Zipcar business model could actually translate to a more rural state like that?

NNAMDILisa, what do you think?

GANSKYWell, it's a really interesting question. You know, basically these businesses at the moment are very focused on density -- population density. So, you know, cities or really urban areas. But, you know, if we look at different models that have been used in the past in more rural places like people share barns and tractors and different sorts of specialty vehicles in a very informal way then, you know, that model exists.

GANSKYBut one of the things people have been looking at, and certainly it would work for peer-to-peer more perhaps than it would for a Zipcar that's a fleet business, and the reason is just from a business perspective is because Zipcar owns the fleet they actually need -- just like if you owned a restaurant -- they need a lot of turns of the table to make the math work on owning each car. So their business model is predicated on needing to be very specific about the sort of micro blocks or neighborhoods in which they have a few cars sprinkled. And they need a lot of sell through in order to make that actually work and be viable.

GANSKYIn the peer-to-peer model it doesn't matter if your car is rented an hour a month or, you know, ten hours a day. It works for the company that's hosting in either case. And so, yes, I think peer-to-peer would just simply need someone either from that community or someone to convince one of the hosts of the current platforms to pay attention to South Dakota. But there's no reason that the model wouldn't work. It's just that because there's a lack of density it wouldn't be one of the first markets that they would likely target.

NNAMDIJen Golbeck.

GOLBECKSo, Lisa, you just sort of brought up this point about this sort of sharing of things like farm equipment and barn space has gone on in rural communities for a long time. And this gets to some of the issues that we discussed before where there's really trust between people in those communities, a lot of shared values, this real sense of community, the things that made sites like Couch Surfing work. But you wonder if it's already going on in an informal way, do we really need a website in those communities to do it, right? If people are already sharing their tractors and sharing their barn space, why do we have to bother throwing (unintelligible) ...

NNAMDISpeaking of websites, if you go to our website kojoshow.org you will get a number of questions answered about where you can do or find things. You'll find links to website there. I looked up all of them today but we have several questions along that line. We got an email from Kathy who says, "What I would really like to share but never see anyone else interested in is lawn equipment, lawnmowers, ladders, shovels, etc. It seems really wasteful both of equipment and space for each house in a neighborhood to own these."

NNAMDIAnd then there is Dena in Great Falls, Va. Dena, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DENAWell, thanks for having this topic and I'll make it short. For years I've been interested in also sharing tools and even sharing plants and just spreading around what you have that other people can use.

NNAMDILisa, what's out there?

GANSKYOh, my gosh. I mean, so before I forget, because I'm not an author and am more of a geek and an entrepreneur, I made a database. When I was trying not to write the book, I started to make a list of all the companies around the world doing these sorts of things. At the website meshing.it, meshing it, there's a directory. And so if I fail to mention something that's relevant to you, my apologies, but please check it out. There's over 5,000 now.

NNAMDIAnd we have a link to that website at our website, kojoshow.org.

GANSKYThank you. So one of those -- thank you for doing that -- so one of those things, for example, is a company -- well one, it's a nonprofit that is really well organized. The URL is borrowtools.org and it's basically in Santa Rosa, which is in northern California, started by a guy in his community who just said, you know, I did a big renovation of my house. I have all these tools hanging around. I'm not going to use them but somebody will.

GANSKYAnd so he decided to make it a nonprofit. He started with maybe 30 different tools. It has over 800 tools. They do free tutorials. You can have any tool for -- if you live in the area you can have any tool for three days for free. If you return it late there's a fine. He's really clear...

NNAMDIRunning out of time very quickly.

GANSKY...there's really clear rules, as Jen said before. Another one is exilandshare (sp?) . There's many of them...

NNAMDIAnd as I said, you can find links on our website. Lisa Gansky is an entrepreneur and author of "The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing." Thank you so much for joining us, Lisa.

GANSKYThank you very much, Kojo.

NNAMDIJennifer Golbeck is a professor at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Always a pleasure.

GOLBECKThanks so much.

NNAMDIThe Kojo Nnamdi Show is produced by Brendan Sweeney, Michael Martinez, Ingalisa Schrobsdorff and Tayla Burney with assistance from Kathy Goldgeier and Elizabeth Weinstein. Assistance today from the highly mobile Palo Espiron (sp?). The Managing Producer is Diane Vogel. The engineer is Timmy Olmstead. A.C. Valdez is on the phones. Thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.