Digital Disaggregation

We had a short spate of con­ver­sa­tion at the TAPoR meet­ing on forms of dis­ag­greg­a­tion (and I guess corol­lor­ar­ily demand aggreg­a­tion) when look­ing at online swap/consolidation sites. I cam across a fur­ther swap site this morn­ing that illus­trated this concept…and is one more example of the way in which inter­net col­lect­iv­iz­a­tion is chan­ging nor­mal modes of eco­nomic exchange through con­trac­tual inter­me­di­ation and intro­du­cing another layer of ren­tier beha­viour. Cell­Swap­per, is a P2P exchange that con­nects people want­ing to get out of long term cell phone plans with those look­ing to pick up a shorter term plan without the costs of activ­a­tion of of can­cel­la­tion. That is they are trad­ing on that thin layer of admin­is­trat­ive costs that car­ri­ers demand. The site is unfor­tu­nately for me only avail­able to the US, but they are prom­ising broader geo­graphic cov­er­age shorty. A fur­ther form of aggreg­a­tion is demon­strated by the microlend­ing sites such as the two that I men­tioned in an earlier post, Zopa and Prosper.