[faramarz]

Why don't you build an airbnb for Tools and Equipments. In winter, I'd pay to borrow someones snow blower once a week instead of buying it out-right.

People with specialized machinery will flock to your system if you manage the bookings and payment processing, and make it easy for locals/neighbours to meet each others needs.

That's something I would personally find value in, but it might not be so technologically challenging for a group of cs majors.

I'll shoot out more ideas if I think of any. You've got the ideal situation on your hands, get busy!

[arnabdotorg]

Taking this a step further:

1. Use Facebook Connect to create a library of things that you own. e.g. DVDs, tools.

2. Suggest Collections/activities that arise out of your social network: "Amy, Jon and you have all the Star Wars movies among you: Time for a Star Wars Marathon? David and Emma would be interested in joining(based on interests)!", or "Joanna and you have all the things needed to go camping".

3. Profit model: Suggest things to buy on Amazon that "completes" the collection: e.g. "If one of the three of you bought "Snatch", then you would have all the movies by Guy Ritchie"

This requires data mining for list generation (see Google Sets), Facebook APIs / Opengraph, location apis, and Amazon APIs, and has a money side to it.

[i hereby release this idea under the "buy me a beer if you use it" license]

[faramarz]

Nice. If he doesn't build it, you should. Looks like a good passive income earner ;)

Cheers

[jayliew]

Competitive landscape:

1. rentalic.com - US startup, based in Silicon Valley, founder appears to have technical and business chops and some social networking cred. Some traction, and imho, the most promising.

2. neighborgoods.net - LA-based, founder does not appear to be very technical. Limited traction around the LA area.

3. zilok.com - EU-based, looks like they are trying to reproduce their EU model of the same thing to the US market. Some traction. Because of their EU background, it is likely that they may not understand subtle nuances / user-behavior/perception of US market, which may be their biggest challenge.

p.s. I've been thinking about this problem for a while.

[faramarz]

Thanks for the break down. I've been intrigued by this opportunity for the past two years. Even purchased Localfindr.com in hopes of doing something about it but never developed the concept further in my head.

Definitely a sector to watch!

[jayliew]

I would challenge you to ask yourself this: Look at one of the competitors, say Rentalic.com. What would you do different than them, product-wise, and marketing-wise ?

[aaronbrethorst]

4. http://www.divvy.com/

[jayliew]

imho, sites like this are great in concept, but the chicken-and-egg problem becomes more intractable the more "broad" it is. The trouble is getting just some traction, in just 1 niche. It almost seems easier again in my opinion, to conquer a specific niche/vertical first, then adjacent areas, one at a time (as opposed to attempting to do a land-grab but see nothing stick)

[aaronbrethorst]

I agree completely. If they saw opportunity, I'm sure ebay could clean up in this space.

[hcarmichel]

You might want to try neighborgoods.net

[faramarz]

I'll be damned! Amazing, nobody in my zip yet exists.. I hope they gain traction. Thanks for sharing

[steveklabnik]

This is a space that's starting to heat up a bit, but out of all the ones I've seen, I think I like neighborgoods the best.

Regardless, 'sharing stuff with people near you' is one of those things I'm keeping my eye on.

[bdickason]

My friends just started a site called Snapgoods.com for this. Not sure if it's gaining traction or not.