Thursday, July 21, 2005

Fortune interviews Peerflix co-founder

FORTUNE interviewed Billy McNair, co-founder of Peerflix. He says "60% of us watch a DVD only once or twice before sticking it on a shelf to gather dust". Peerflix is an online DVD trading site, where you can sign up to trade your used DVDs with other users. So far, the site has 10,000 users.

By relying on its members for inventory, Peerflix has no need for costly warehouses (it has only 17 employees at the moment). But as eBay has discovered, not all members are wholesome, law-abiding folks. In fact, Peerflix had to terminate the membership of an Oklahoma woman who tried to game the system by claiming to send out multiple DVDs to earn Peerbux. (A newly-installed bar-code tracking system in post offices will prevent that abuse in the future, McNair says.) But most members play by the rules, and some are downright addicted to Peerflix: A homebound, disabled man in Florida trades upwards of 60 DVDs a month, says McNair.
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Category: Competition

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