The other day I came across a new peer-to-peer renting platform namely Zilok that just publicly launched. This is a platform that you simply can rent anything. In first glance, based on its founding concept, it’s could be a totally constructive or devastating idea. On a constructive side, an user can save money on the things she want or need, by just renting instead of buying those kind of things. On the other side, who going to buy all new things if they have the choice of renting those online, and this might not help to boost the economy.

However, the co-founder and CEO of Zilok, Gary Cige has a different perspective, “Inspired by conservation and green movements in Europe, Zilok is the fun way to tackle over-consumption while expanding everyone’s access to the things they want and need—whether that is a scooter or Wii, a ratchet set or a tuxedo”. He said Zilok was about a movement, a green movement, where this platform provides opportunities for users to make money in a green way.

To rent a product on Zilok, an user can enter the query on the products she was looking for, and where she stay. And from the search results, select one of the items showed with confirmation of the request. Next pickup the item locally and pay the owner directly, it’s done. Since the search result will also built-in with the Google Maps service, an user can roughly know how far she can get the items through the renting system from the place she resides in.

Zilok is a San-Francisco startup, went live in public beta in November 2007 in the US, France and Belgium, and in Spring 2008 in the Netherlands and in the UK. Below is the brief introduction of Zilok in a video format. Enjoy.