Roll Your Own Netflix
more praise for 'discontinuous fractional ownership'
In response to Props to Bookmooch, Replicate Technologies founder Ken Novak writes:
Hey John, this sounds good. For dvds, cds and paperbacks, zunafish.com works well (albeit not quite so karmic). For $1 plus $2 postage, the site sets up swaps. I own about 20 dvds, and I gradually swap them after I watch them, so that about 3/4 are ones I haven't seen. It's like netflix, with a bit less choice online but more DVDs at home and no fixed fees. Now if I could only acquire the time to watch everything I'd like to watch... #
I like the idea ... after getting over the initial Netflix rush during which the near-infinite film choice collided with finite movie watching time, I opted out and tried dvdswap.com. The experiment didn't last long, mainly because I had a big problem with liquidity. At the time, there just weren't enough swaps to be had. Now I just buy on half.com and resell on ebay. The buy/sell spread is usually about $4/movie (includes postage), which is the price I pay at my local video store, except no late fees, costs you nothing if you can't get to it, and no monthly commitment. I use Half.com because bidding on ebay is too much work and the selection of used inventory is pretty good.
Anyway, Bookmooch is incredibly liquid - I think the inventory is > 2 Million books and growing very rapidly. I think 'bigger than amazon' is definitely a possibility.
4:46:58 PM 
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