The rise of the sharing economy
LAST night 40,000 people rented accommodation from a service that offers 250,000 rooms in 30,000 cities in 192 countries. They chose their rooms and paid for everything online. But their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain. Hosts and guests were matched up by Airbnb, a firm based in San Francisco. Since its launch in 2008 more than 4m people have used it`2.5m of them in 2012 alone. It is the most prominent example of a huge new `sharing economy`, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, co-ordinated via the internet.
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