Verizon Entering Sharing Economy With Car-Sharing App

The sharing economy is undoubtedly on the rise, with its global revenue set to hit $335 billion by 2025. Now Verizon wants a piece of the growing market too. The telecom giant has announced its plan to launch, later this year, a mobile app to connect independent car owners and rental agencies with would-be drivers on the go. The rising popularity of on-demand car-sharing has led to the recent successes of ride sharing apps such as Lyft and Uber, but Verizon has bigger plans—it is said to be expanding the platform to other connected resources in the sharing network.

What’s Next For The Sharing Economy

From car rides to groceries, apps like Uber and Instacart have helped fostering a new service market for connecting consumers with similar needs to share a service together. Born out of such market demand, the booming sharing economy is set out to transform the way many service industries conduct their business. But could we take this sharing concept one step further and apply it to big data?

By default, matching another person in your proximity to share a service with requires sharing a lot of personal information. And an economy supported by big data sharing would work seamlessly and even anticipatorily across different service platforms. Despite the potential convenience it may provide, this would most likely be a hard sell to the consumers as privacy concerns persist. Nevertheless, as the sharing economy continues to grow, sooner or later the valuable data it collects will presumably be put into good use. In fact, this might have already happened, as many opt to log in on a new service with their Facebook accounts.