This is a paid review on SwitchPlanet.

I remember when I was young, I have a collection of Hong Kong kungfu comic books. I have a group of friends that share the same passion with me, so we often share our collections together. My problem was within the small group of friends around my area, the small number of comic books collection wasn’t enough to satisfied our needs. I believe many of you share the same dilemma like me.

So when I have the opportunity to do a review on SwitchPlanet.com or SP, I was thinking what a great idea! Now fellow fans who share the same passions can switch their old DVDs, CDs, Games and Books with other members for free.

SP website is using a green colour theme, I guess that matches their way of showing support for green way, which in their term is when you switch your old media, such as DVD, CD, games and books with other people, you get to save the planet resources by reusing the old one. Emm.. I guess that is correct in some context actually.

SP was in close beta testing and since they have improved their system a lot, they now offer open beta for you to invite your friends and family to join them. You can click on the beta logo to join now.

First impression I have on SP website is the site is done in a orderly manner. Navigation is simple and straight to the point. All the basic stuff, such as about us, mission statement and contact page links are situated on left panel. All switchable stuff are categorized accordingly and displayed in the middle of the page. Under each category, for the ease of locating the title you need, you can use the search bar. Or if you do not sure what title to look for, like I do, you can always select from some predefined selections, such as Most Wanted, Most Switched, Most Available or Newest.

A brief look on the available titles shows that a huge selection is there for members to browse to. If you do not find a category that your title should be belong to, you can always use SP contact page to request for the category to be added, which I doubt you ever do, because the selections are HUGE!

Beside switching your stuff, one can do more with SP. You can add friends to your friend list ala friendster way. This way you get to share information and make friend with someone who share the same interest. One thing I like that distinguished SP from other site is that SP allow you to make donation to various organizations, such as American Red Cross, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, The Nature Conservancy, American Cancer Society and Child’s Play Charity. For the detailed list, you can refer here. You can make donation every switch or just any moment you feel the need to.

Switching your used stuff with others that share the same interest is ever easier with the advance of the Internet and websites such as SP. With other unique features such as extensive list of collections, friendlist, online blog and forum, with good deeds such as making donation while your making switches, SP proves to be the next big thing in online switching, further more it is FREE, you just have to pay for the postage. That is good enough reason for me to use SP.