anyone to access, connecting people who wanted goods with people who were ready to part with
them. But in a radical departure from the typical Craigslist exchange, Beal set an unusual ground rule:
no currency or trading allowed. The network was called Freecycle, and all goods had to be given
away for free.
The idea for Freecycle was sparked when Beal developed and ran a recycling program for
businesses at a nonprofit organization called Rise in Tucson, Arizona. Local businesses began to give
Beal used items that were still in good condition but weren’t recyclable, like computers and desks. In
the hopes of giving the items away to people who needed them, Beal spent hours on the phone
offering them to charities, but made little progress. At the same time, he had a bed that he wanted to
give away, but thrift shops wouldn’t accept it. He realized that he might be able to solve both of these
problems with an online community that matched givers and receivers more efficiently.
Beal sent an initial e-mail announcing Freecycle to about forty friends, inviting them to join and
spread the word. When some of the earliest Freecycle members started posting items to give away,
Beal was caught off guard. One woman offered to give away a partially used bottle of hair dye, which
would expire in a matter of hours. “It needs to be used really soon,” she wrote, “so if anyone has an
urge to go darker, tonight is the night.” A Texas man posted a more desirable item—fishing tackle—
but had a string attached. He would only give it away to someone from whom fishing tackle had been
stolen. “As a kid thirty-four years ago, I stole a tackle box. There’s no way I can find the person and
make it right, so I’m trying to do the next best thing.” With some people finding matcher loopholes in
the system, and others trying to give away junk, Freecycle seemed like a lost cause.
But Beal believed that “one person’s trash really is another’s treasure.” And some people gave
away actual treasure on Freecycle that they could have easily sold on Craigslist. One person donated
a camera in excellent condition worth at least $200; others gave away good computers, flat-screen
TVs, baby car seats, pianos, vacuum cleaners, and exercise equipment. When Freecycle started in
May 2003, there were thirty members. Within a year, Freecycle had grown at an astonishing rate:
there were more than 100,000 members in 360 cities worldwide. By March 2005, Freecycle had
increased tenfold in membership, reaching a million members.
Recently, social scientists Robb Willer, Frank Flynn, and Sonya Zak decided to study what drives
people to participate in exchange systems. They were striving to get to the bottom of a vigorous
debate among social scientists, many of whom believed that the types of direct exchanges that take
place on Craigslist were the optimal way of exchanging resources. By allowing people to trade value
back and forth, a system like Craigslist capitalizes on the fact that most people are matchers. But
some experts anticipated the rapid growth of systems like Freecycle, where members give to one
person and receive from another, never trading value back and forth with the same person. These
researchers were convinced that although such a generalized reciprocity system relies on people to be
givers and can be exploited by takers, it could be just as productive in facilitating the exchange of
goods and services as direct matching.
The intuitive explanation is that the two types of systems attract different types of people. Perhaps
matchers were drawn to Craigslist, whereas givers flocked to Freecycle.* As Deron Beal told me, “If
there were only takers, there would be no Freecycle.” But Willer’s team found that this wasn’t the
whole story.
Although Freecycle grew in part by attracting people who already leaned strongly in the giver
direction, it accomplished something much more impressive. Somehow, Freecycle managed to
michael s
(Michael S)
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