"In the last couple of years the ability to exchange goods and services through the what has come to be known as collaborative economy has given rise to emerging sectors such as housing loans to individuals, the use of shared cars and the performance of tasks using distributed open collaboration (crowdsourcing). None of this would have been possible without technology; it has improved communication channels between people allowing them to create, deliver and consume goods and services of all kinds, including the establishment of, and access to, a series of swap agreements.
Lorrana Scarpioni, founder of the social enterprise Bliive, aims to use the dynamics of collaborative economy to enrich people´s lives and social relationships, and to explore new activities. This young Brazilian, graduate in Public Relations from the Federal University of Paraná and also in law from the University Center Curitiba (both in Brazil) has established, under this name, a collaborative, time sharing social network boasting more than 15,000 users in 55 countries.
Scarpioni is convinced that everyone has “talents, skills or knowledge to share” that can be used through Bliive, “as assets to create a collaborative ecosystem where time is the currency”. The procedure to start sharing experiences is simple: the user needs to log onto the Bliive platform and share an experience, for example, a painting class lasting an hour. In return, the user receives a credit of TimeMoney, the currency used on the network. After that, the user can exchange the credit for any other activity they want to perform from among those offered by the other members of the network: learning to play the guitar, practicing German or someone to help with a move, among many other options. It is also possible to cooperate voluntarily with a registered NGO platform in exchange for time credits.
This Brazilian, who was named a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum in 2013, decided to create her start-up in May of 2012. After watching two documentaries on alternative economies and online collaboration, she had the idea of ??creating a bank of virtual time, where people could share this resource with anyone in the world. She began the project in solitary, and after 6 months she had already built a team of two designers, two developers and a lawyer.
Even though other online platforms based on the concept of time bank exist, like TimeRepublik, Scarpioni ensures that Bliive differentiates itself from rival platforms, firstly because it is a social network, and secondly because it focuses on the exchange of experiences and knowledge and not only on the realm of professional services. She explains: “our social status is based on the number of people we have helped and the new experiences we have lived and learned from. Furthermore, from a technical point of view our platform is more complete, especially with regard to available functionality and user experience”. To date, Blive has registered 21,000 hours of activity and has made 1,000 time exchanges."
