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vSkips
Best for: eBay addicts
In a nutshell: Long-standing general sharing site
USP: You can plumb your eBay items into your vSkips profile
Number of users: Not disclosed, but there's a healthy community here. A search for products shared in London returned over 100 results. Apparently there are 28,268 virtual skips, which suggests 28,268 users; how many of those are active isn't clear.
Ease of use: Good. I like this site a lot. Navigation's clear and the options for searching by area are comprehensive; listing your own items for sharing is good. Lacks photos.
12 June 2008 06:25pm
Regardless of other systems, freecycling via Yahoo Groups is still the definitive way. If you look at the whole freecycling community (freecycle.org, reuseit, freesharing.org etc) then you are talking about 10 million users in 10,000 groups. The problem remains that the Yahoo interface is not the best, which is why so many users use email. Their is another way - Grouply allows you to keep the email interface but only to those messages one is interested in.
14 June 2008 03:39pm
Some statistics for vSkips on May 14, 2008. There are 14,251 registered users with 1836 items being offered today. There are also 1233 requests for items. The site is very active with approximately 800 new users signing up each week. The interface is at version 3.0 but a new version is in development. vSkips has a sister site in the USA called vDumpsters with over 10,000 members. Although it has less members, the US version has almost double the number of items being offered, with 3584 up for grabs today. vSkips and vDumpsters certainly don't have the following that Freecycle has built up over the years, but they are both very new sites still. vSkips is just over a year old (although BETA versions were available for testing a few years prior to the official launch in April 2007). vDumpsters was released in January 2008, so it's still the new kid on the block.
17 July 2008 09:23pm
I've been on vskips and like it, you get your own skip that you can manage, put items in and remove them. Search your area or any area you want then contact members by the private message system or you can leave your details so that only memebers can see.
I love freecycle also, but have found vskips to be a lot easier to use.
09 August 2008 02:27pm
I just tried to join my local Freecycle group and hve been rejected. No explanation, no way of finding out why. Disappointing
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