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Comment by paisible | Hacker News Reader

Even if they don't, they'll come out stronger.

That is easily the silliest thing I've heard about this so far, and this is after reading AirBnB's PR statement.

If they fuck this up, they won't "come out stronger", they'll come out with a sufficiently heavy PR backlash that people won't use them anymore. And that'll be that. As it stands now, the only thing people are hearing are negative things about AirBnB, and unless they take huge steps to fix that, there's going to be a lot of people who won't touch them with a 10 foot pole.

I think we're over-estimating how big and widespread this story is, because it's all over the HN front page. Sure, plenty of people are going to hear about it and it's gonna be damaging for airbnb. But a whole lot of people aren't going to hear about it because they don't read HN or the Financial Times.

It's bad for airbnb, but shouldn't be a killer. From my point of view, my only surprise is that it didn't happen sooner.

Yes, but it could yet get worse. With the (slow news) weekend coming up, if the tabloids ran out of fodder and decided to run with this story, it could get very big indeed.

Good thing we have a debt ceiling crisis going on, then!

Bah, hit the reply limit. I wasn't specifically thinking about US media- UK tabloids would have a field day with this, for one. AirBnb is a presence in Europe as well...

Given how often major news outlets seem to jump on "THE INTERNET IS BAD LULZ" stories, I wouldn't be surprised to see this picked up and used as a reason to push that internet browsing history law [1], or some other net neutrality thing. Does it make sense? No. Will it help anything? No. But logic rarely matters when you're trying to be alarmist.

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110728/17280315306/house-...

I hope you see how

But logic rarely matters when you're trying to be alarmist.

is ironic when you're saying

I wouldn't be surprised to see this picked up and used as a reason to push that internet browsing history law [1], or some other net neutrality thing.

I realize, but reading Techdirt for any length of time is a really, really quick way to kill any faith you have in the idea of an open internet and/or fair IP laws actually going through, at least in the US.

they are lucky this is happening at the same time as the US debt ceiling. on a slower news cycle, this would have been on the nytimes front page

If AirBnB fails, it won't be because some competitor comes and takes the market, it will be because the whole model of renting apartments doesn't work. And given the success they've had in such a short time, safe the say the model DOES work. EVERY SINGLE COMPETITOR will face the same online/offline hurdles. Don't think AirBnB won't copy whatever their competitors do better in a second, and they'll still be recognized as the trail-blazers in this industry.

This kind of news could kill peoples appetite for the product, despite the business model, effectively killing the whole industry segment.

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