Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Death of Couchsurfing?

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 321 posts

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#311

Post by owenversteeg »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #307
owenversteeg wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! I've hosted a good bit and that's completely different from my experience. > Women would be surprised that I had a bed just for them It sounds like you were taking a lot of the desperate people on the site that aren't mostly in it for the cultural exchange but to save $5. Because here's the thing - everyone's profile has a section detailing what kind of room/bed the Couchsurfer will get. A "shared bed" is a red…

Couchsurfing was founded after Casey Fenton had a plane ticket to Iceland but no money for a hotel. So, he spammed the University of Reykjavik's e-mail directory asking to stay on someone's couch. Aiming to save money on accommodation has ALWAYS been a thing on CS. Yes, it is great when cultural exchange and friendship arise on top of the exchange of free accommodation, but it doesn't happen with every guest or with…

Yeah, I know how the site started :) But Couchsurfing is a lot different from the CS of nearly two decades ago. It's several orders of magnitude bigger, and it's got many, many travelers who never host, only surf, with an ungrateful attitude who see you as a free hotel. I saw downthread you said you switched to other platforms (which is great, they need to grow!) but they are a lot different from 2020 Couchsurfing, where I get a constant flood of messages and regularly get messages from people essentially demanding a free hotel and food, occasionally for the most ridiculous of reasons (like that they're here for a conference and want to pocket the reimbursement.)

And I have no problem with people that want to save money, but if that's the - only - thing they're using CS for, with no interest in ever talking to me, then I'm just not going to host them.

It's admirable to take in anyone, but it's pretty rare. The vast majority of hosts I know (and have surfed) will only take people in who have read their profiles.

Like I mentioned, there's a safety component to this (for men as well!) but also a practical side - many people live a good bit outside the city they're listed in, some people go to bed early or late, some people play music all night, some people are nudists, some people have a shorter sleeping spot (couch/bed/etc)... If you don't read profiles you're just rolling the dice - even if you just want a free bed!

By the way, I think I'll try to be more active on BW/Trustroots (hosting mostly.) Any advice for how to get my profile seen? On CS I get absolutely flooded with messages (and often get great, well written messages) - on BW and Trustroots I've gotten nothing.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#312

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

owenversteeg wrote: post #311
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couchsurfing was founded after Casey Fenton had a plane ticket to Iceland but no money for a hotel. So, he spammed the University of Reykjavik's e-mail directory asking to stay on someone's couch. Aiming to save money on accommodation has ALWAYS been a thing on CS. Yes, it is great when cultural exchange and friendship arise on top of the exchange of free accommodation, but it doesn't happen with every guest or with…

Yeah, I know how the site started :) But Couchsurfing is a lot different from the CS of nearly two decades ago. It's several orders of magnitude bigger, and it's got many, many travelers who never host, only surf, with an ungrateful attitude who see you as a free hotel. I saw downthread you said you switched to other platforms (which is great, they need to grow!) but they are a lot different from 2020 Couchsurfing, w…

Again, as a member for many years, I constantly heard year after year "CS is different than it used to be. There are so many freeloaders now!" But when I signed up in 2005, two of the demographics sending me requests were academics coming to town for a conference, or e.g. guys whose girlfriend kicked them out and they needed a place to crash. I didn't see this change significantly in the years before I bailed in 2016, and I always found it easy to ignore them and host backpackers.

Really, for me the negative change in CS over the years was the explosion in hosts who were sedentary. If you don't do shoestring travel as a lifestyle yourself, you won't be able to sympathize with your potential guest's needs. For a site that, in Europe, spread initially through the hitchhiking community, I was appalled to see so many CS hosts by 2008 who looked down on free travel, and threw around words like "freeloader".

I also can't agree with people complaining about guests who need their hosts to feed them. If they are ordinary backpackers who just budgeted poorly, that is one thing, but if they are intentionally trying to live on no money, that is another thing entirely. Among the freespirited alternative traveler community who founded CS, there have always been people traveling by providence, and they have been among my best and most memorable guests. Their stories and positive attitudes far outpaid the pasta and salad I made for them.

Finally, you can't assume that guests who write a non-copy/paste request actually read your profile. Sure, they may have quickly scanned your profile for things they can mention in a request, but that doesn't mean they care about the details. For years I could only offer a mattress on the floor and clearly said so in my profile, and yet so many of the guests who wrote ostensibly personalized requests either didn't catch that, or when they accepted my invitation and arrived at my home they complained about it. Again, writers of copy/paste are just as likely to be appreciative or not.

As for getting requests on BW or Trustroots, either live in a place where many travelers want to go to, or become a superhost whose house is open to all travelers and word of the good vibe there attracts people to your region even if initially they don't know what to do there. Those are your only options, really. However, this looks to be the biggest wave of CS refugees ever, so you may start getting more requests regardless.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#313

Post by valuearb »

inimino wrote: post #296
valuearb wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America hospitals and emergency rooms are required to treat you.

Then you are not "forced to shell out money" in such a case, yes?

It’s like any debt collection negotiation.

My brother had a $10,000 surgery. He works a minimum wage job so they tried to get him to agree to a payment plan. He didn’t think he could afford that, so offered $2500 as full repayment and they accepted.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#314

Post by alentist »

ashtonkem wrote: post #222
alentist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you read the link before downvoting it. It’s about the effect on the hotel industry as well as consumers and hosts. You also haven’t provided any evidence to back up your claim. I’d be curious to read it, if it exists.

I absolutely read your link, it was talking about hotel consumers. But I was never concerned about hotel consumers; I was concerned about the effects on everyone else . Studies into various markets have shown that AirBnB increases rent for residents by converting long term rentals to short term rentals, reducing housing supply. The question is whether or not the increased tourism offsets the damage caused to the hous…

You absolutely did not, because it very clearly states it's not just about hotel consumers: It's about the welfare effects on hotels, travelers (including those who otherwise wouldn't have been hotel consumers), and hosts [1]. Why do you keep mischaracterizing it?

The EPI thinktank report you linked to simply states the costs outweigh the benefits without any numbers to support that conclusion. This paper, on the other hand, does look at the numbers. I appreciate the reference, however.

[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w24361.pdf

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#315

Post by rdtwo »

turnipla wrote: post #5
rdtwo wrote: post #2

Couchsurfing is dead post covid anyway. Who wants to risk a stranger with covid in their house for free.

I don’t think you ever used CS before and don’t understand it regardless of the current situation (which will resolve eventually) COVID surely affected all hospitality, but money isn’t relevant to CS anyway.

Actually I have, and and covid changes the calculus for couch sharing to high personal risk. It made sense before but the additional risk skews the equation

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#316

Post by erebrus »

nicksellen wrote: post #172
peterburkimsher wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trustroots has a nice map-based interface, but lacks references and meetups. BeWelcome is my preferred option, and is open-source and has excellent financial transparency.

I'm one of the developers working on Trustroots. We're working on references :) I merged this PR yesterday https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots/pull/1413 , there is a bit more to work out for displaying them... There is also a meetup feature already (see https://ideas.trustroots.org/2017/08/21/meeting-people-now-o... ), it's a bit primitive right now, but it was a first iteration, and we've been discussing some n…

Whats the size of the current userbase and how many off your users are active?

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#317

Post by GuySoft »

nicksellen wrote: post #181
h0l0cube wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I saw that link on the BW forum post and now have my data :) It would be great if the data was signed, and it could be verified with a public key. That way you could have validated references for import into BW. Alas, I see nothing of the sort in the JSON.

I'm one of the Trustroots contributors, we have an old work-in-progress pull request to import couchsurfing data ( https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots/pull/1086 ), but it needs some love. As mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219760 references is coming. The verification issue though for import is a big one, we couldn't just trust a JSON file the user has uploaded to have real references, there…

At the moment I would think its not likely for you to just scrape the profile on CS and then paste that in the right filled. Its something that if someone wants to exploit they can code anyway, its mostly there so users spend less time filling forms. We did something similar for Thingiverse at the time shapedo.com was in the 3D printing. It worked fine and we had a few hundred people migrating. True validation comes from people accepting friendship requests and some form of endorsement.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#318

Post by CSvibeMax »

I love CS! I have made tons of best friends, both male and female from around the world. I hosted a lot (max of upto 20 ppl one night in Mysore India!) and surfed a bit on my travels and best is when you get hosted by your ex surfers!! Monetizing couch surfing and providing the option of Joining via Facebook screwed up couch surfing according to me- the philosophy was lost. Earlier it was about travel, culture/ lifestyle experiencing platform, and had a word-of-mouth/kind of exclusive feel to it - you'd meet genuine people who took the effort to research online and find this forum. It was more genuine and with no expectations. I was very private about couch surfing, never posted stuff about it on my normal social media sites and never wanted to be famous for it. Soon after the Facebook link and those paid for profiles (green tick mark!! Ughh) all sorts of people ended up joining CS. In many countries, ppl are not aware of sensibilities and especially in a country like India, where women are stared at (even by my own friends! ) I had to keep a low profile. It was so so so hard to patiently educate friends, neighbours and family about basic concepts of travel, backpacking, alternative lifestyles.... Once Facebook got included, people found out and it became like a platform for users to brag about the girl they hosted and show off!! Yuck... BTW, I am an Indian guy telling you about hosting all the chillest open minded ppl in a small indian town! So trust me, it got BAD once non genuine ppl found out about CS! It's become commercial, about getting laid, and mostly all the cool vibe ppl are harder to filter through among the zillions of morons. It's become harder to connect now. I hope couch surfing survives, maybe make some whole sale changes.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#319

Post by seattle_spring »

MattGaiser wrote: post #81
seattle_spring wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of the non-founder employees who work at one of their hundreds of portfolio companies that have refused to go public. Literally only one company backed by YC, Dropbox, has gone public to date.

Does Y Combinator have a lot of companies that could go public? Most do not seem IPO ready. And what does any of that have to do with YC?

My comment was in response to "Who would hate on YCombinator." To expand on my answer: All of the employees who were duped into taking a low salary in exchange for the promise of valuable equity are the ones who would hate on YC.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#320

Post by ciceryadam »

bananasbandanas wrote: post #167
gmargari wrote: post #145

So sad to see this aggressive shift. I have made many good friends from Couchsurfing, and I was paying the annually fee both to support the site and to be "Verified by CouchSurfing". Even though on March they received my annually payment, today after reading this article I tried to login to CS after some months, only to find out I had to pay _again_ to even access my profile. I could not see my photos, references, me…

I just tried to search for my city on BeWelcome to check it out. When I search from the landing page, I get a CSRF token error. When I then try to search again from the search page, I get a 404 /search/map not found. It seems they still have some way to go..

3 days later it's still the same
Post reply on HN