Somehow most of the ideas I have have their root in my personal dissatisfaction over some issues. I don’t know if that’s universal but I’d be tempted to believe so. If we don’t like something we try to fix it, right? Now we even have a splendid tool, the internet with all its blogs and communities, for sharing our little grievances with the world and hoping someone, if not ourselves, would make the world a little more bearable place for us. This is exactly the case with the following idea too.

I live in Finland and not all of the nice magazines published around the globe are available here (quite few actually, I guess). There has been some occasions when I would have liked to read a particular magazine that has only limited availability here, if at all. Last time when I was again feeling angry of not finding the magazine I hunted for I came to think of an internet service for swapping magazines.

The idea is simple, just like any swapping service. Having extra issues lying around, I could go there and make them publicly available earning me some points to buy issues of magazines not available to me. Instead of using the points right away I could also save them and create a wish list. The service then would match supply and demand. Submitting most wanted magazines would earn me more points than some other ones. Respectively buying magazines with less demand would cost me less.

If a match was found, the service would notify the sending person of the address of the recipient. The sender would then ship the magazine and take care of the postage. Then she could use the points earned for buying some new reading for herself.

The benefits of a service like this would at least include better availability of the magazines and growing audience leading to higher ad rates. Should growing audience drive higher circulation also the publishers might be more than interested in this kind of service.

This was just a rough sketch but I suspect it illustrated the idea. I’d be one of the first to sign up for a service like this.