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Nice to see [Mathew Ingram](http://gigaom.com/2013/10/01/trust-reputation-and-regulation-can-the-new-sharing-economy-find-a-way-to-scale/) at GigaOm give a thoughtful precis and response to my [Reputation Systems](http://tomslee.net/2013/09/some-obvious-things-about-internet-reputation-systems.html) post.Also, it’s timely to see today’s news that sharing economy company RelayRides has confirmed my predictions in its move away from its original market of hourly rentals and towards longer-term rentals, described in Wired, Forbes and elsewhere. Hourly rentals may appeal to “sharing” but monthly rentals is just commerce. It’s becoming more like a regular car rental company and less like a car-sharing company.
Why? Because of the demand for growth that faces VC funded companies, and according to Crunchbase RelayRides has been funded to the tune of $30m by investors including Google Ventures, General Motors, and others. Let’s hope that the boom and bust mentality behind these companies don’t have a bad effect on local initiatives like Community Carshare near me, which don’t have ambitions to disrupt the world but focus on doing something useful and actually cooperative.