Airbnb Annual | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb Annual

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187 pointsgoronbjorn52 comments

Really impressive layout and visuals. I know some folks have complained about the "long form scroll" as being less usable than linked pages broken up by section, but I'm a fan nonetheless. The more I use the web / tablet / phone, the more I find I prefer sites that put all of their content on a single scrolling page. It just feels easier to digest.

In this case, honestly, I probably wouldn't have clicked through each section if it were in a more traditional layout -- I would have looked, said "cool", and moved on.

But as it stands, I scrolled through the whole page from top to bottom and AirBNB delivered the full experience to me, as intended.

I agree, it was so nicely done and fluid.

This is the reason you hire developers, and not "UX experts" No one other than a really good developer would have made it so fluid and nicely.

Just a question:

This is exactly what i would expect from anyone claiming to be a UX "expert" - they should be able to show me new UX models that I, as a non-expert - would not have thought of.

In this particular case - the fluidity of the background transitions along with the data changes was fantastic - and I tried it in reverse to mae sure it worked both directions.

The execution, I expect from a developer implementing the vision of the UX expert.

Am I wrong? Can you explain?

(An aside: This is the type of "UX Expert" Quora really needs. The UX on Quora is so horrible, it was 30% of the reason I quit using it)

Yep, that struck me to. A lot of previous long scroll examples have been "sexy" but lacked fluidity.

I'm not a massive fan of long scroll in most cases; but it has it's occasional uses, and this was a brilliant implementation.

I was impressed at how well it worked when I opened it on my Z10. Very well done implementation.

What's your impression of the Z10?

Fluid?? Are you joking? Try it on Android (Nexus 7 / JB) Urgh...

I tried it on a bunch of Android devices and the only one that worked well enough to be usable was my Asus Transformer.

Many Android devices lack hardware rendering, I meant fluid on quality software. iOS devise, Chrome. Etc.

Try to scroll with your mouse wheel. It still sucks. It's only good with a touchpad.

certainly works quite well in the format of telling a story.

This is very nicely done, and the numbers show AirBNB has grown to be a powerful force in the travel industry.

Given this growth, I hope they are working on an official response or plan to address the problems they are having in New York City seen here:

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/your-money/a-warning-for-a...

2. http://gothamist.com/2013/02/05/east_village_man_fights_30k_...

Sometimes I wonder about these issues, and as the commenter below points out, the silence on these issues is deafening. I'm reminded of when YouTube launched, and they allows copyrighted content to a point [0], this helped drive page views. I'm not saying this is what airbnb is doing, I guess I'm wondering if this is a overall strategy for start-ups. This is one of the key elements that allows them to grow quickly.

I guess talk is cheap, journalists can write something, but when someone sues, then you have to pay attention. Why would you direct your energy to journalists with out an agenda. Just to get pulled into the discussion and side track you from growing the company. Looks like the EU is really taking off for them anyways, maybe NY and CA are not hot topics around the company?

[0] http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/21/youtube-founders-knew...

I somehow cannot convince myself that Airbnb not a niche. I do see it as a useful thing under some circumstances like SXSW or the Obama inauguration.

I have the opposite feeling - 5 years from now hotels will be a niche to be used only for exceptional circumstances.

The silence on these issues is deafening. Neither AirBnB nor their fans have appear to have any intention of voluntarily stepping up and saying something about this. It might spoil the party, after all.

AirBnB's supposed multi-billion valuation is built by completely flaunting the law in its biggest markets. For all the talk of "community" in this annual report, there is no mention of the potential long-term social or economic impact of enabling lawbreaking on such a scale. The fact that none of the reporter's questions in the NYTimes article were addressed in any meaningful way is indicative of AirBnB's overall "whatever we can get away with" attitude.

Oh, and here is another topic I'm sure AirBnB is not eager to talk about:

http://google.com/search?q=airbnb+rent+control+san+francisco

This is one way to replicate the scroll magic from this annual report: http://prinzhorn.github.com/skrollr/. It's really user-friendly and uses keyframes for timed actions based on scroll position.

Really cool. Dunno how I missed this previously but it's awesome and fun library. Like a pop-up book for the web generation.

Excellent. I will definitely use this.

Fantastic, thanks for sharing!

There's no indication that you should start scrolling the page. I completely missed that fact the first time I visited.

I clicked on a few random things and got no response, and tried right-scrolling, but figured it out in 20 seconds or so. Still, not very intuitive on Chrome on OSX where the scrollbars are hidden.

I'm on OS X too, took me so long to figure out I need to scroll. Is it a web problem or an OS problem?

Aren't we to the point yet that if you see a page with next to no content it's pretty much assumed to start scrolling? Not to mention the fact that most people use browsers that display the scroll bar..

Sure, most people probably do, but Lion & Mountain Lion hide the scroll bar if there's a trackpad, as was the case for me. I clicked the link from pg's Twitter feed, read the words "Airbnb is poised to bring memorable local experiences to our truly global community", thought "that's nice", and went along my way.

I switch back and forth between a crappy desktop PC at work and a nice desktop PC/Macbook Air at home so I'm familiar with Apple thinking it's a good idea to hide scroll bars. That always bothered me.

Attaching a mouse re-enables scroll bars, I finally figured out.

It is a good idea to hide scroll bars. Saves valuable screen real estate.

I think most people just assume there is broken Javascript or something.

This really makes me wish there were an "AirBnB for groups" -- a way you could make a listing which was only visible to people in a certain community, and then manage the stays (including keys, maid, etc.). I don't think I'd want to go through the process of running a public airbnb property (where it seems the social convention is to accept people like a hotel, unless you're full) and turning a bunch of people down.

What'd really be great is if someone did that for design conferences. Seriously, all they'd need is an airbed or something, and you could stay in a stranger's apartment, and then meet a really good friend who's going to the design conference!

(https://www.airbnb.com/story if you haven't heard it before.)

This is a lot like the MailChimp one. http://mailchimp.com/2012/

This is torture on an iPad. Nothing loads until scrolling stops completely.

SO THAT'S why websites scroll!

The purpose of website scrolling is to replace information that has been seen with information that hasn't - and to provide the reverse operation when scrolling the other way.

This design beautifully conveys the data visualization aspects of the page combined the message they are trying to craft and integrates it into the natural behaviour of the browser: the scrolling motif. Note that they also preserved the incremental change of the scroll - unlike some sites where they have attempted to flip a whole page at a time per scroll.

As far as re-inventing the scroll, I say bravo. This is truly innovative.

Beautiful presentation. Airbnb's product is something that can spark emotion more than most services. I love how they brought that to their annual report.

FWIW, they also put out a very nice print version of the annual report. Don't know if it's available on PDF but in paper-form, it's quite well designed.

Ideally, I'd expect hitting print on the linked page should produce the print version; instead, it produces something nearly unusable, and without 90% of the content.

I'm new to web design and I was very impressed with this presentation. Could anyone tell me what technologies were used to build it? Thank you.

See my comment above. This is what I use for scroll animations: http://prinzhorn.github.com/skrollr/. It's super easy to implement and use.

Ones that don't work very well on Nexus 7 / JB. Seriously, the point of a web page is to convey information. This one sucks hard at it, because it jitters like crazy while scrolling.

Yeah, I don't think JB Chrome handles position:fixed well for large elements. Firefox renders the page nicely, but in Chrome it ruins the experience.

We all aspire to change the world. Airbnb is showing us that they are actually doing it.

Congrats guys and keep up the amazing work.

This is beautifully crafted. But more than that, I wish more websites presented an "annual" of some sorts where they proudly displayed advances in a graphically heroic manner.

It really makes you want to associate with companies like Airbnb more when you see projects like this outside of their core competency. Well done.

Viewing this on mobile, it appears that the entire world is undergoing some kind of catastrophic seismic event.

In 2010 a green dot for Moscow begins to grow, but when you scroll down more, Saint Peterburg will never materialize, instead, a large yellow blob will grow from a middle of nowhere northwest of Caspian sea. (I guess Volgograd is somewhere there, but why?)

So I guess it isn't any precise.

Wow. Very excellent presentation. And the numbers show tremendous growth by AirBnB.

Beautiful use of skrollr, it is amazing how the design first philosophy of Brian has created a new standard for marketplaces.

Why are the background colors changing drastically? Its annoying. Its fantastic otherwise! Great growth rate too.

I cannot see the likes of Hilton etc ever coming up with this - be it production or a real story...

This needs a start button so it will play like a slide-down movie!

this is some javascript black magic right here

Very, very nice presentation.

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