Hi everyone,

This is the first time I’ve ever written a blog, but since its seems like today everyone has one, I thought I would join the crowd and start documenting the development and, hopefully, growth of Commuto.

Commuto was a concept I had a few years ago but it took my wife to give me a kick in the behind to get me going. I always thought that as a student, I would love to have a place where I can trade my unused items with other students. I know there are bulletin boards in schools, and craigs list online, but I thought something like this would make it much easier for students to find other students in their own school.

When I went to school I had a lot of books and video games that I had already read or played through which I had nothing to do with. The stores would give me 10 cents on the dollar, if I was lucky, and I always felt like I was getting ripped off. I hope that through Commuto, students will now have another option where they can finally get the full value of their items back through exchange. The idea of having no barriers to exchange, and being able to decide with another person what the true value of your items are, is what I love. Who is to say that my bike isn’t as worth as much as your microwave, except for maybe you, I guess.

The other reason I really wanted to start this is for the social aspect. I love Facebook, and many other online social sites as well, but I wanted to combine the online social aspect with real life social interactions. This will allow students to meet other students, with common interests, face-to-face. It will hopefully make a school of 20,000 students feel a little smaller.

But the idea really expanded after that. From schools we created communities. Any type of community really. A book club, a weekly poker game, a basketball league, anything really. I realized that I have no idea what my friends own, and they don’t know what I own. This will allow us to post everything we own online for each other to see. When we meet every week to play basketball we can bring our video games, book, movies or whatever else for exchange. Its worked great so far, and I hope its not an isolated incident.

I guess that’s it for a first blog. It’s not really funny, or smart, or even that interesting. I’ll need to get better at this blogging thing if I want it to be as entertaining as Gilbert Arenas’ blog, but then again, my life is no where near as interesting as his.

I will continue to update this blog as we go on with updates, news, and a few rants. In the spirit of the Oscars, I want to thank my developers who have done some great work here, my partner and my wife for believing in the idea. Oh and my parents of course.

Thanks,

Stephen Arbib

p.s. I can’t seem to get the spacing working.  Like everyone else, I blame this on Microsoft.

Commuto is a social community that aims to help college and university students trade their unwanted goods for desired goods with other students in their schools. This service is free and is available to all students worldwide. If you don’t see your school listed on our school search page, please contact our support team at support@commuto.com and we will add your school to the list.

Commuto is an online service that allows people to trade with another group of people, whether that’s in a school, college, work place or any other community, without ever having to wait for shipping or incur any costs.

As a member you can create a profile, post all the items you are looking to trade and add any items you are interested in and Commuto will automatically match your wants to other people’s needs. Commuto is the most powerful, user friendly online trading community out there and it’s completely free.

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