Collaborative economy and platforms: "one for all or all for one” ?[Économie collaborative et plateformes : « un pour tous ou tous pour un » ?]

Boosted by the success of Uber, AirBnB, and other BlablaCar, the collaborative economy is in vogue and now appears, for many, the main force of digital economy. New collective modes of action constitute a constant resource for innovation and thus contribute to rethinking mass services and the monetization of participatory contributions. Behind the expression collaborative or participatory economy, however, there are two very different patterns. A first approach is based on the model of the production of goods and sees in cooperation the possibility of transforming the considerable crowd of Internet users into as many potential contributors. In a second sense, the collaborative economy refers rather to the model of a service economy, by having services provided directly by Internet users among themselves. In both cases, under different modalities, we are witnessing a complete reversal of the underlying economic models. They redefine the boundaries between amateurs and professionals, between market and non-market, they question the question of the sustainability of these models and have, more broadly, consequences at all levels of society: infrastructures, types of enterprise, nature of services, individual and collective practices, forms of entrepreneurship...