In the face of hefty citations, Lyft, the mobile app that lets you order a moustache-adorned car to pick you up in a matter of minutes, is rallying the San Francisco’s tech scene to speak up in its defense. 

Getaround has some high-profile supporters in its corner.  The peer-to-peer car sharing service recently raised $13.9 million from investors like Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, has expanded to Chicago with the help of its mayor, Rahm Emanuel. 

Getaround, the car-sharing marketplace that makes it dead easy to take a spin in a stranger’s car, has pulled in $13.9 million in first round funding from an all-star cast of investors: Menlo Ventures’ Shervin Pishevar, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, actor Ashton Kutcher, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. 

The concept of “Collaborative Consumption” is not new in the West, but it is in the East and especially in China.  The term collaborative consumption basically means sharing things with other people — via barter, trade, or rental — and giving access instead of ownership.  The Internet has pushed this quaint notion beyond just sharing between friends to create a powerful business model. 

Loosecubes, a website that lets companies sublet empty office spaces by the day or week, launched new ranking features today aimed at gathering detailed review information from renters.  That data will be used by the office-sharing startup to make its workplace listings more effective.