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Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

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Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#151

Post by r00f »

nateberkopec wrote: post #40

Airbnb ruined Couchsurfing because it changed social expectations around hosting strangers at your house. Before Airbnb, no one really even thought people would pay for the privilege to sleep on your couch or your spare bedroom. But once Airbnb started getting popular, I think a lot of hosts on CS were thinking well, this is neat, but I could get paid doing this. And a lot of CS guests became refugees from Airbnb thi…

I might be off trend myself, but 2011?? I CS'ed in 2016 in Singapore and it was insanely popular

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#152

Post by robocat »

xchaotic wrote: post #144
robocat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does AirBnB provide a “super-guest” filter, or equivalent so that you can brainlessly and reliably filter for suitable guests? I would host independently minded guests that don’t want/need hand-holding, and guests that are vetted for being socially respectful (tidy, no 3AM drunks, etcetera). My property is tobacco and alcohol free, which surprises friends, so I can imagine strangers being disrespectful. Do trustroots…

it's funny because when it comes to any real disputes, AirBnb sides with landlords as much as possible (and as much as PR will allow), because that's who are they getting the money from. The guests are just the 'meat' in the machine so it would be more consistent if they allowed property owners to vet guests even more to avoid any issues/disputes in the first place. For RoboCat's case - it does still allow to not acc…

> [because they are getting the money from landlords]

Which is weird, because of course the money comes from the guests.

I have seen the opposite dynamic when it was a buyer's market with real estate: the vendor is paying however the agent was actually helping the buyer (to the detriment of the vendor). Real estate agents make their money from volume of sales, to a first approximation.

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#153

Post by kragen »

xtracto wrote: post #118

I tried to use it once around 2005 while studying my PhD in the UK. I needed to stay in London for a couple of days but was rejected and couldn't find a bed. I ended up going into a Hostel (hostelworld) at that time. It didn't work for me (maybe because of my nationality?).

From your web site I understand you're Mexican? What kind of attitudes about your nationality did you encounter in the UK?

(Man, you accuse the US of pervasive racism and you get flagged into fucking oblivion in this fucking racist-dominated shithole. I only mentioned it because I have a lot of experience with US racism toward Latinos, which is fucking pervasive, but none with UK racism.)

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#154

Post by salamala »

At Trustroots, we are all volunteers and building a platform for all to use safely and provide the amazing experiences we all had participated in often on CS.

We need help, mostly in developing new features, features to help connect all of us and create meaningful relationships and connections.

Please check out Trustroots GitHub or connect with how you can be involved. We are a small team but have big hearts to recompensate for the magic lost at CS.

Thanks and we can do this and keep HospEx networks like this thriving for decades to come.

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#155

Post by stjohnswarts »

jl6 wrote: post #42
cainxinth wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pareto principle. 80% of people are decent human beings, but the 20% that aren’t cause 80% of the problems.

20% of people are not decent human beings? Harsh.

This seems about right, just anecdotally though.

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#156

Post by stjohnswarts »

glandium wrote: post #107
nateberkopec wrote: post #40

Airbnb ruined Couchsurfing because it changed social expectations around hosting strangers at your house. Before Airbnb, no one really even thought people would pay for the privilege to sleep on your couch or your spare bedroom. But once Airbnb started getting popular, I think a lot of hosts on CS were thinking well, this is neat, but I could get paid doing this. And a lot of CS guests became refugees from Airbnb thi…

I can't tell about the US, but paying money to sleep in spare bedrooms was a thing in Europe well before Airbnb.

Same here. Usually informal and under the table cash transaction. Not nearly as common as a formal lease though, but some people have issues with those.

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#157

Post by this_is_not_you »

subpixel wrote: post #131
jessriedel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's not the same, but AirBnB profiles with a long list of positive ratings as a guest play a similar role. "This person slept under my roof, acted well, and treated my home with respect". When I advertised my apartment for a sublet on Craigslist, I received a couple AirBnB profiles and considered them pretty compelling as references. I ended up subletting to one of those people, and they were great.

The dynamics are such that bad reviews are rarely given by host or guest. The flow is carefully tailored to produce this result. As a guest especially, why complain about a place you’ll never revisit when the payback could be a negative review of you that makes it more difficult to use the service?

You could make the same argument about Couchsurfing.

But actually, on Airbnb you can't see the review of the other person before both have submitted their review. That ensures that neither party retaliates.

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#158

Post by jessriedel »

subpixel wrote: post #131
jessriedel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's not the same, but AirBnB profiles with a long list of positive ratings as a guest play a similar role. "This person slept under my roof, acted well, and treated my home with respect". When I advertised my apartment for a sublet on Craigslist, I received a couple AirBnB profiles and considered them pretty compelling as references. I ended up subletting to one of those people, and they were great.

The dynamics are such that bad reviews are rarely given by host or guest. The flow is carefully tailored to produce this result. As a guest especially, why complain about a place you’ll never revisit when the payback could be a negative review of you that makes it more difficult to use the service?

As mentioned by another comment, both host and guest submit their review before seeing the other's review. And they rarely interact again. Having looked at many property listings, and stayed at places with marginal reviews, I'm quite sure bad hosts get bad reviews. And I am pretty sure the same is true of guests.

Furthermore, guests and hosts submit a review a very high fraction of stays, and one cannot submit a review without actually hosting or actually spending substantial money as a guest, so AirBnN avoids most of the problems that Amazon reviews have.

Re: Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of Couchsurfing.com

#160

Post by brianguertin »

mdasen wrote: post #120
xapata wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an avid Couchsurfer and early AirBnB host. Initially AirBnB had a vibe very similar to Couchsurfing. Both seemed to lose the personal touch as they became larger networks. Money exchange is highly influential as well, but I don't think we can cross off network scale from the causes.

I think AirBnB was trying to have that vibe at the beginning. The problem is that you end up in a situation where that vibe doesn't scale. If you're trying to create a business worth billions, you need a lot more hosts and transactions than amateurs accommodate. An amateur might host someone for a few nights a month or a few nights per quarter. A professional is going to have an investment property that they're looki…

Same thing happened while I worked at Turo. They pivoted from "If we all shared our cars, we won't need as many! Less traffic and better for the environment!" to "We need to optimize for people who are buying cars/fleets and renting them out like a business, as they bring us the most value"
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