Givmo is a service started by a software engineer named Dustin Byrne. The project itself started out with when he found himself hopping from job to job and accumulating things in his house. Rather than throwing them out, he thought up an idea to give them away for online and thus, Givmo was born. According to him (via Mashable) the premise of this service is that if you can find the right taker for an item, people are willing to give their stuff away for free and on top of that, they will know that the stuff will be going into the hands of someone who would appreciate it.
Permit me to tech up the concept of Givmo for you gadget fans. Let’s say you have a laptop and have been using it without problems for two years. After that you decided to get a MacBook Air, not because your old laptop died on you, but because you just want it. After a few months, you realize that you never use that old laptop and that selling it will bring you next to no money, you can just snap a picture of it and list it for free on Givmo and when a person sees your post, all they have to do is pay for the shipping to transport it from you to them. Givmo will provide the shipping label so all the ‘giver’ has to do is box up the item, slap the label on and send it on to its new owner.
In this scenario, the person who gets the laptop got a new toy for a very affordable price and the ‘giver’ doesn’t have to deal with the hassle and shame of throwing away things that are in perfectly working condition. On top of that, it is good for the environment since your “junk” never reaches the landfill. Byrne and his partners work as Givmo’s engineers they have negotiated a discount rate with UPS for shipping from which they take a small commission (“less than a dollar”). While it doesn’t seem like the service has taken off yet, ideas like this are always good for social purposes and they also exhibit a smart use of ecommerce. Embedded above is a video that was used in a charity drive to promote the service for your viewing pleasure. What do you think about this service? Will you be looking around your room thinking about what you could give away and maybe get from Givmo?
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