min.im

The idea behind this site came out of a situation that happened in real life...

I needed to trim a hedge that I have, but I had no hedge trimming tools and the hedge that I needed to cut was way too big for me to do manually, I needed a powered set of cutters.

I was out walking in the local area when I saw a friend of mine who was out, you guessed it, cutting his hedge, with just the tools that I required. Because he knew me, when I asked him if I could borrow them, he said yes and as we got chatting it turned out that I had something in my shed that he needed. We swapped our equipment for a couple of hours and still do. When I need his cutters I go around and he comes over to me too.

It got me thinking that there must be heaps and heaps of stuff in houses, sheds, attics in my area that people have, that they might lend to me once in a while, if only I knew what people had that they we were willing to lend out.

So I'm suggesting a social network for lending your possessions out to people that you already know, or who you get introduced to via the site, whom you trust enough.

I was thinking that it would need to have all sorts of checks and balances built in - perhaps a little bit like the ones that I seen on LinkedIn.com in which you get connected with various levels of remove. So, the people that I know personally are at the 1st level. These 1st level people might know other people who they trust and could recommend to me should I message the system that I need something that one of their friends has. So I might need a set of wall painting equipment. Luckily, some of my 1 level friends have it, so I go straight to them and arrange the swap. However, all my 1st level friends come up short when I ask for a paint-stripping tool. However, one of my 1st level friends, friends has exactly this tool and so the system suggests that they recommend them to me. Wheels within wheels, but you get the idea.

The question remains, how does the site know where you live and what you have that you are willing to swap. Well, the long and the short of that is user input. People who sign up would have to state where they live and make an inventory on the site of all the things that they have willing to lend out. I guess the site could assist with this, offering tick boxes for popular items, but if you wanted to swap any of your huge CD collection, you'd likely have to write in the whole lot (I like the idea of CD swapping!).

I think that the idea has merit, but it would have to stay in the real world, in other words, people who live close by and people who you know, or know via a friend. I don't know about you, but I would not lend my stuff out to 'friends' in the Facebook sense of the word. I know quite a few people, but I have no real idea what they have stashed away, nor they of me, but I'm sure that sometimes a swap would be possible.

Please add any comments below.