OK, then by that rationale every time I stay at a normal hotel I'm "sharing" it with the other guests who have stayed there before? It's a misuse of the word, plain and simple, popularized by well-financed corporations that want to be seen as altruistic populist movements as they skirt the current laws/regulations.

I get that there's a real distinction between these new companies that facilitate peer-to-peer transactions. But I'd much prefer a term like "peer economy" than "sharing".

That doesn't explain why Uber is more about sharing than taxi companies, nor why Airbnb is more about sharing than the old way of renting your flat.

Taxi service doesn't allow you to easily share your car and hotels don't allow you to easily share your flat. Traditional renting of an apartment is a long-term proposition which again inhibits sharing.

> Taxi service doesn't allow you to easily share your car and hotels don't allow you to easily share your flat.

Sharing your car or home (whether the latter is rented or owned) is very easy without apps and people have been doing it for just about as long as cars and homes have existed. What the apps facilitate is making money from arms-length rentals to strangers. This may be a form of sharing, but even if so its a fairly specific one with its own name, its just that using an accurate and specific label rather than a misleadingly general one doesn't make as good marketing copy -- "sharing" sounds warm and friendly and positive, "rental" not so much.

Sharing your car or home involves a substantial risk and requires trust so people have traditionally been doing it mostly within their private networks of friends and family. What Uber, Airbnb and the like have achieved is the application of technology, reviews and rating schemes to build and scale these trust networks up to sizes that are more practical for a society.