Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

I always find it odd that Couchsurfing is never mentioned when it comes to AirBnb. In my mind, they laid down the cultural practice and AirBnb swooped in to capitalize on it. After all, why do something for free when you could get paid instead? Unfortunately it was yet another nail in the CS community and as far as I know, the couchsurfing concept is mostly dead in the water.

The analogy could almost be equivalent to MySpace and Facebook; the former created the mindshare and made the big first mistakes, while the latter learned from them and expanded the concept.

View on HN

In the early 2010s, I used to be an Couchsurfing user - as a host, guest, and even just meetups for tours/recs while traveling internationally.

> After all, why do something for free when you could get paid instead?

I really doubt the Couchsurfers were the ones who were converting their listings to Airbnb spots initially. Rather I think Airbnb enabled previously unwilling (or unmotivated) people to start hosting others for a cost.

The type of people I would meet were from a different cut of cloth than Airbnb folks. One picked up my friend and I from a Megabus stop and later we ended up going to our host's second home on Martha's Vineyard. One let us try out his expensive cycling bike out for a bike ride. I've attended a yoga session with my Couchsurfing host before on a trip. When I hosted, I took my guest (a cadet at West Point who hadn't had drinks in forever) on a spontaneous bar hop with my group if friends.

There was always a mentality of paying a good experience forward and a sense of community - which is tough to preserve when it becomes a transactional experience.

That being said, I agree Airbnb likely led to the downfall of the CS community. There were some sketchy ppl in that world. After running into one of those, I slowly found myself preferring to pay for the security and safety although deep down I knew I was going to miss out on all the fun that I couldn't simply pay for. As for hosting, I just wasn't interested anymore knowing that if someone were paying to crash at my place, it would be less about hanging out or getting recs but more about just needing a reliable roof to cover... where's the fun in that for a host?

Right. Initial pitch to PG is that it is “basically couchsurfing.com for money.”

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1337011619268882432?s=20

"It all (already) exists in some way or another"... which makes it all about changes in opportunity, which mostly are uncertain/unclear over something like 10 years (AirBnB was founded in ~2008) and superior/excellent execution. So its all about execution, adjusting trajectories and being lucky, that the wind of change blows your way.

Eg. I absolutely don't want to downplay Mark Zuckerberg's contribution/genius, but Facebook comes to my mind, which certainly wasn't the first (attempt) at a social network. And: What are they today?! - Kind of the "web" (on phone/mobile) in India for example. With all the social integration and native (applications) first on (Android) phones, they became a better version of the WWW in less developed regions of the world.

And even older, Passporta Servo, that exists since 1974 and is still alive and kicking. Alas, there's no money involved so it is of no interest here.

I think being an Esperanto speaker as an implicit requirement has kept it safe from Eternal September.

You don't really need to be any fluent in esperanto, just be able to arrange (by email), your stay. The esperanto community is extremely open, and simply by showing a minimal interest in the language you are very happily accepted.

You can rent full apartments on airbnb, which is I suspect the most used feature.

Yes but not originally. The description from PG’s post sounds exactly like couch surfing, which had been going on for at least five years at that point.

CS concept still lives on in communities like Trustroots, it wasn't beaten by AirBnB, it killed itself after adding membership fees, prior to that they served different, even if slightly overlapping, groups.

Former heavy CS user here. None of the replacements have the same mind share and critical mass that CS once arguably did.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com