The Sharing Economy - Fast Company article

[Stephen Gornick]

Here's a pretty decent article from Fast Company titled "The Sharing Economy":
  - http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/155/the-sharing-economy.html

From the article:
 "Amazon came first, then eBay, and peer-to-peer is next. It's almost as far as you can get on the spectrum of goods exchanged,"

That evolution (from a centralized model to a centralized+P2P hybrid model to finally a pure P2P model) is also described here in a post by Tim Hyer of RentCycle:
  http://blog.rentcycle.com/building-the-bridge-to-p2p

Specifically Tim describes that until eBay really took off, we as a society were too fearful of doing business P2P-style with strangers.  Once that fear eased, Craigslist was able to dominate its market.

"It’s all about baby steps and doing what’s right at the appropriate time."

[m4rkiz]

centralized sites have few advantages over p2p - you don't need research that much when going abroad or moving between cities - ebay stays ebay all over the world same with herz, while smaller sites and organizations are often country or region specific - that leads to another thing - you can get anything off ebay while smaller sites have only fraction of things or services you looking for, next, you have some protection when using middleman - paypal, escrow etc. while direct dealing with people (even if you can meet them in person) may have bad outcome in some cases... all depends on what when and where...

i really don't think there is any chance for revolutions, especially not that kind that anyone can foreseen... but i agree that slow evolution will take place, especially with every fees increase on all big sites

[Stephen Gornick]

Another article, similar message:
  The Emerging, Collaborative Economy
  http://www.smartmobs.com/2011/04/24/the-emerging-collaborative-economy