Online Trading, Not Just For DVDs
Monday, December 18, 2006
By Don Sanchez
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=entertainment&id=4863292
KGO - A Peninsula company that is a place to swap DVDs has bigger plans for 2007. It has a patent to swap virtually anything online. Peerflix started with DVDs, and now the sky is the limit.
Stacks of DVDs, but if you're tired of them, or searching for a new favorite, all you need to do is log on to Peerflix.
Billy McNair, Peerflix Co-Founder: "We've got one-quarter million DVDs on the network and people are trading all around the country."
Peerflix got started when Billy McCair and a friend began trading DVDs for their children.
On their Web site, many of the films come with mini reviews and a price that Peerflix has set based on age of the DVD and other factors. You can list DVDs you have for trade and another list of DVDs you'd like to buy. Then the Peerflix computers kick in making matches.
When you get a name, you simply print a mailing envelope on your computer, insert the DVD and send off the postage paid mailer. Peerflix gets a 99-cent commission for each trade.
But if it works with DVDs, why not more? Peerflix has acquired a patent for what could signal a new era in protecting what you can buy and sell online.
Billy McNair: "We really built a core trading platform that today we're applying to the DVD space, but could just as easily apply to video games, books, or anything that lends itself to bring traded."
The way it is now, you can turn yesterday's Working Girl into tomorrow's Pirates of the Caribbean. But now with the new rules, you could take a child's Legos and turn it into an iPod.
And McNair says it is legal because it simply transfers ownership of the DVD. The people at Peerflix think they can change the way we do business, starting next year.