21 ms·

The Death of Couchsurfing?

rdtwo 6y ago
Couchsurfing is dead post covid anyway. Who wants to risk a stranger with covid in their house for free.
- thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago
  I am a host, and will pretty much start hosting when semi-allowed to in Australia.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- turnipla 6y ago
  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.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    I’ve never used couchsurfing. Can you elaborate a few more details for outsiders like myself who perhaps can’t read between the lines you’re drawing on the topic? It doesn’t seem that far disconnected from reality to posit that COVID has had some affect on this?
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      CS inititally grew through communities like hitchhikers, bicycle travelers, Rainbow Gathering hippies and other alternative demographics. For people driven by wanderlust and keen for a sense of community with other sympathetic people, government-enforced COVID travel restrictions may compel them to stay put for a while, but the virus itself won't put them off traveling and hosting for long. No one wants to give up on an entire lifestyle and peer group, and they are used to budgeting on the basis of spending relatively little on accommodation when they are on the road. Plus, hitchhikers and cycle-tourers are used to thinking about statistics, because their travel habits involve some measure of risk, and so, as horrific as some anecdotal accounts of COVID are, they are unlikely to fear the virus so much.
      - qu83rt 6y ago
        The person above claimed that hosts would be reluctant because visitors might have COVID, not that the travellers would be more reluctant.
        Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        A certain amount of people invested in the community will still be willing to host simply because they crave the social contact with other members. But besides that, a lot of passionate travelers are keen to host on CS because contributing in this way makes it more likely that they themselves will be able to save money on accommodation and meet interesting people when they travel. So, COVID won’t dissuade everyone from hosting.
        dvtrn 6y ago
        Is this your own opinion or, other than meticulously picking through couchsurfer forum posts, how does one gather the sentiment of such a large community of hosts?
    - peterburkimsher 6y ago
      CS started because someone messaged a load of university students so he could stay on their dorm room floor. I discovered it with a dumpster-diving friend in UCSB in 2009. It stays legal by involving no money. (Airbnb's subletting issues do not affect CS). Hosts let people stay in their house: whether a couch, sleeping bag, or spare room. Guests message hosts in advance, asking whether they can stay. Reply rates vary. It stays safe by a reference system. My girlfriend, parents, and everybody on the Internet knows exactly where I was sleeping each night. CS built a large community through word-of-mouth, and was non-profit until 2011. Then the admins decided to make it a B Corporation, and promised not to charge. BeWelcome was founded at that time. I stayed, and I'm glad I did, because I joined weekly meetups in Amsterdam, Kaohsiung, Taipei, Tainan, and Auckland, and made many great friends that way. If this were about COVID, a temporary fundraiser to help the admins get through this tough time is reasonable. A monthly fee is not. I can't do subscriptions. My visa will expire in 6 months, and then I'll need to leave - no more income, no more bank account, different SIM card. A friend who knows some people in HQ said that this had been planned for a while. Doing it now, while all the meetups are temporarily suspended, is cruel and foolish. Not consulting the membership is also unacceptable. I wish that internal reform will be possible, and the admins will change their mind. However, I worry that it may not happen, and that's why I think we should start exporting our data and creating new profiles on BeWelcome.
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        BeWelcome was founded well before CS went corporate. And BW was founded by people upset at the direction Hospitality Club (an earlier community) had taken. Sure, BW absorbed some CS refugees in 2011, but many BW members were anxious about CS trends having too much influence on their own site.
  - rdtwo 6y ago
    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
willio58 6y ago
An alternative will rise eventually. Couch surfing is all about experiences, friendships, and not thinking about money. Any person creating the alternative will have to understand and accept that.
- peterburkimsher 6y ago
  BeWelcome is open-source, has been around for a decade already, and has excellent financial transparency. Their fundraising target for this year is 1300€. I've already contacted their developer to ask if I can help create a data import tool so people can easily transfer their C$ profiles. It's heartbreaking to see such a wonderful community be divided like this. There are no "rich" and "poor" countries, only ones with more inequality. Ideally I wish that the HQ would change their mind, but my support is now behind BeWelcome as the alternative. We must work together and stay united as a community. Travel will continue, despite government lockdowns. Contact tracing is much easier with hospex sites like BeWelcome than with 11 strangers in a hostel room. Economic troubles will lead people to cheaper alternatives. Even if C$ has been ruined by venture capitalists, giving freely and paying it forward will live on elsewhere. In case this message reaches the C$ investors in Silicon Valley, I don't hate you personally, and I wish that internal reform is possible so that we don't all have to flee to a new platform. But the new change, brought without consultation, is contrary to the principles that CS was founded on. CS is not Airbnb, nor is it a dating site, nor is it exclusive. Selling personal data and private messages didn't bother me too much - Facebook does the same. But trying to charge a monthly subscription from people who don't even have stable countries, never mind bank accounts, is totally ignorant. Change your mind, quickly, because the community is already one foot out of the door.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > create a data import tool so people can easily transfer their C$ profiles. This has been brought up in the past (there have been multiple waves of disgruntled CS members leaving for BW), but it is pretty clear that CS would consider this web scraping that violates their terms of service. CS does not provide any authorized way to export its profiles. EDIT: Sorry, I'm wrong. I left CS and chose to use only community-driven hospitality-exchange platforms pre-GDPR.
MattGaiser 6y ago
>If community powered websites like Reddit can survive Reddit is backed by venture capital and shifted heavily to be more advertiser friendly.
- peterburkimsher 6y ago
  I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure, given that it's run by venture capitalists, yet still remains free of ads and open to newcomers. Monetising CS is like demanding a signup fee to join HN: it will drastically change the community.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Hacker News is smaller than most major subreddits in terms of usage. 400 upvotes is considered a lot here. The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. It doesn't process money or really require a lot of content moderation either.
    - freddie_mercury 6y ago
      That is all true but the real answer is that it is run as a charity project by billionaires. So it doesn't need to be monetized.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        They probably source enough engineers on here to make it more bait rather than charity.
        bigiain 6y ago
        There are very few billionaire charity projects that don't have some kind of bait stench associated with them... This site is a lot less brazen that, say the Gates Foundation or Jack Dorseys "all the strings attached" charity "donations", but there's no doubt it's run in the interests of YC and they're doing it for the benefits they get. Not that I begrudge them that. It just needs to be something you bear in mind when wondering about odd looking article rankings or apparent voting/submission patterns that evade the fraud detection... It's their space, they can do that if they want. I (and everyone else) needs to weight up the benefit to themselves against the benefit to the people in control, and determine whether to hang around here, or walk away. For me? They do an OK job of not taking too m much advantage of their ultimate power here. I'm mostly cool with them.
cmehdy 6y ago
Couchsurfing was fantastic in its early days, then came the era of using websites for just-a-little-bit-too-much-dating, then they went .com and tried to be "cool" with redesigns, eventually drowning the simplicity of their concept a little bit too much. That $25 yearly fee slapped onto everything, with no chance to even connect with previous contacts, is disappointing to say the least. No doubt that the meaning of "couchsurfing" will far outlast the website, especially now.
- projektfu 6y ago
  I still think it's pretty fantastic and I have had great experiences with it in the last 3 years. The design sucks but things like hangouts and meetups are worthwhile even for travelers who do not feel comfortable staying in someone's house.
- starpilot 6y ago
  There are creepy amounts of guys who only host young, attractive women. It used to be more like hosting anyone - young, old, any gender, and sharing travel tales.
  - yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
    This has been my vicarious experience. The friends of mine who were young, attractive women who tried Couchsurfing all ended up with creepy stories along the lines of "Oh yeah I stayed with this guy, and then — funny story — it turns out he only has one bed! Ho ho ho…"
- nicbou 6y ago
  Their app is also pretty bad, to the point it became standard to just exchange whatsapp numbers right off the bat to make communication possible. Couchsurfing has a great community, but it has been resting on its laurels for too long.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
aclimatt 6y ago
Like the article says and as applies to almost all failed startups / products, it can all be traced back to bad management. I've been a heavy CS user for over a decade, I've been to events at their (now defunct I suppose) office in SF, I met their CEO at the time (one of many) and even did a walk around the block chatting strategy with their VP of Product at the time. After building lifelong relationships through the platform, and comparing my experience as a user with management's side of the story, it was clear to me that they had very little understanding of their userbase. Couchsurfers are broke. By definition. Meeting people is a huge value add, and the longer you stay on the platform, the more you gravitate toward the "community spirit" and less "saving money" side of things. But you are kidding yourself if you think that first time CS users are on the platform for any other reason than squeezing a few more days out of a thin backpacking budget. Not only are they broke, but even the community often has an anti-money ethos. Just look at the outrage (as the article points out) when they switched to a B corporation. And it makes sense -- taking an inherently capitalist product (lodging) and building a community to make it free creates a very specific narrative. Therefore, the expectation that CS users, especially first-time, will pay even a dollar on the service is DOA. They need to make money (exactly how much is up for debate), but this isn't the way to do it. But that doesn't mean there aren't any other choices! CS Event sponsorships, cross-product integration (language learning, travel deals FFS), other corporate sponsorships, a more Airbnb-like private experience (maybe the community would hate that too, who knows), partnerships with local tourism authorities, discounted tour / event packages... None of these were even close to tried. I'm not at all advocating that Couchsurfing should have become Tripadvisor, but to barely even consider a few alternatives to nickel and diming a bunch of broke backpackers just shows that CS was on its way out long before COVID-19...
- jeromegv 6y ago
  It’s also possible that if the premise of your product is being free for broke people, there’s just no path to profitability or even subsistance. You always anger your base, whatever you do. And then your platform becomes irrelevant as it fails to adapt due to... lack of money.
  - peterburkimsher 6y ago
projektfu 6y ago
There seems to be a lot of anger in my local community. Probably 10:1 angry vs. supportive. It's sad because this is the end of the sharing economy that got overrun by the gig economy. I'm not sure the network will move to another site, and there's a lot of friction to redraw all the lines of connection and reviews.
teruakohatu 6y ago
Couch surfing is not dead. In the adventure motorcycling community, there are this concept "tent spaces". It is like crowd surfing but instead of a couch, you get access to a toilet and space to pitch a tent. https://advrider.com/f/threads/tent-space-map-v2.1215147/ https://advrider.com/f/threads/tent-space-map-v2.1215147/
- soord51 6y ago
  Idk if you read the article but this is mostly about the couchsurfing website not the concept. They specify that even if the website is dead couchsurfing as an idea will move on in the article too.
- Ayesh 6y ago
  Warm Showers is also pretty good. It's mostly Europe focused cycling community, where you meet amazing cyclists with a decent garage and a night full of stories.
tdeck 6y ago
This really reminds me of how podcasts have gone. It used to be that nine out of ten podcasts I listened to had no ads - they were about spreading a message or having fun, or getting some personal recognition. They didn't have major overhead because it's cheap to come on once every week or two and chat with your buddies. Now, not only are there many high-quality professional podcasts, but the old fashioned ones I enjoy have all one by one gotten in on the game. Eventually podcasting became something you either made money at or you were doing it wrong (see also: blogs). When even BackStory and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe are shilling for Blue Apron that transition is complete.
- alexashka 6y ago
  If you're looking for people who are still having silly fun, have a look at Twitch and the folks over at 'just chatting' or I think there's a section specifically for programming? Those channels very much have that informal vibe. Regarding making money or doing it wrong - says who? The barrier to entry for podcasting has never been lower. It's all in people's heads :)
- Dumblydorr 6y ago
  It's capitalism, many people have Bills that need paying and they don't have the incredible resources many of us on HN do.
owenversteeg 6y ago
So I imagine there's a lot of people here that don't know Couchsurfing or what the big deal is. Couchsurfing has been one of the most important things in my life, so I'll do my best to explain why it's so special. The basic idea is you stay at a stranger's place, or you host a stranger at yours - completely for free, no money involved. Everyone does it differently. Some people plan their trip meticulously months in advance and give arrival times to the minute, while others send a message at 9pm the same night asking if you're free. Some people ask to stay one night, some three, some far more; some bring bags of delicious food and artwork of their culture and some bring nothing. I mostly host, and I've had all of the above - and then some. You have an incredibly diverse group of people. I've met artists, musicians, dancers - everyone from a Syrian man who lived under ISIS for years to an evangelical Christian woman who wanted to try shrooms. The beautiful thing is that it's anything you want it to be. People have profiles that are often filled out with a good amount of detail (I usually skip the skimpy profiles) so you can pick out whoever or whatever you want. You want a pastry chef? You want a violinist? You want an architect? You want someone tidy and on-time or a hitchhiking hippie? Simply search for one to host or stay with. The friendships and relationships I've made through Couchsurfing have been some of the best and most interesting I could have asked for. And the best part - you can do it all from home, traveling the world from the comfort of your couch. Anyway, that's the beauty of it. I really hope that the network of people can be saved. Long term, I think it can, with something like BeWelcome, but of course it's a network effect problem - no hosts=no guests. If anyone is curious about Couchsurfing (or wants to couchsurf my boat in the Netherlands - seriously, anyone is welcome, please come!) then feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile.)
- morganherlocker 6y ago
  I had a similar experience with the couchsurfing community 6 or 7 years ago. Beyond the basic hosting concept, there was also a large group of people who would meet up regularly in my city, which made it really easy to find activities for the guests you had in town. I really hope they find a way to keep going.
- alexashka 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Couchsurfing is so interesting. Its success relies on it never becoming mainstream. It's like those word-of-mouth-only parties that are so great but if enough people hear about them, they are no longer any good. I had a similar experience with drum circles in Toronto, Canada. They were this hippie heaven of people coming together in a park and playing drums once a week in the summertime. Other people would come by and picnic, sit around, dance, hula hoop, whatever. Once it got popular enough, the park would be littered by the end of the day, so local residents complained and got drum circles banned, so we don't have drum circles anymore, because they were too good and a complete non-profit :)
vvpan 6y ago
An aside: Why does Medium add a login wall to some articles? Creating an account on a website to read somebody's blog post to me sounds... excessive.
- DanielleMolloy 6y ago
  We’ve been considering moving our labs‘ blog there (because less maintenance, higher visibility in tech academic communities) and have been wondering about this too. Can someone comment? Are they aiming towards raising a login wall for the whole platform?
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    You can make all your articles free/unpaywalled if you want. But then if a publication wants to add your article, they can’t. Only paywalled articles can be added to publications.
gumby 6y ago
Would Covid-19 have put an end to the travels of Paul Erdős? That would have been a tragedy.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Coachsurfing explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOUobuGaY7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOUobuGaY7U
JSavageOne 6y ago
More reason to move towards a free and open source decentralized web. Otherwise a beautiful community over a decade in the making can be obliterated by the flick of a switch of a couple money-hungry idiots wearing suits.
- EGreg 6y ago
  Yes! https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform It’s here use it
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  I feel like the biggest money drain for any community website is not server or development fees, its moderation and community management. You cant just stick up a php app on a vps and let it run forever for $3/month. You have to hire people to remove spam and to read user reports to remove rapists and creeps from the platform.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Hell just plain ole support. I got locked out of my Couchsurfing account twice and getting in was a pain. I also dispute the "get a VPS and ship it" for 3/month -- there are a lot of images on Couchsurfing, and a userbase that's non-trivial in terms of size.
husky_voice 6y ago
Can't read story about Couchsurfing paywall as the article is behind paywall ;)
- Markoff 6y ago
  Well folks, in these changed times it seems that the last artefacts of the old world have been firmly cemented in history, as Couchsurfing International Inc. decides to unilaterally charge its members, eroding away the last remnants of community spirit and hammering the final nail in the capitalist coffin it built for itself. The fact Couchsurfing didn’t warn or consult the community it hosts that the company was switching to a paid service, effective immediately as of 14th May 2020, only underlines the already poor track record of the management. Just in case you weren’t sure how mainstream the service went, they’ve gone and removed all doubt. In order to simply message old friends through the site, people who you warmly welcomed into your home, who kindly hosted you in a strange foreign land — or who perhaps changed your life — you must now pay a subscription fee. Users have essentially had their accounts frozen unless they pay the fee immediately. The bosses of Couchsurfing know how much these old connections mean to some members, so in one final hustle have blocked messaging and even referencing, forcing those who have no other communication links to sign up for at least a month to speak to their friends, and hoping for a little bonus before the gentrified party is over for good. It also means those that use the site only for hosting, in other words, offer their homes to others for free, have to pay the fee too. This should kick out the remaining ethically-minded members. Leaving only noobs and those that want to save money when travelling to run the whole show. To be fair, $15 a year is not a lot to ask. But the way they asked shows everybody exactly where Couchsurfing stands.
  - Markoff 6y ago
    Couchsurfing admits on its own blog that 4% of its users have contributed to the platform before the recent announcement. Considering that at time of writing it has well over 15 million users, at 4% that’s at least $15 million dollars alone if everyone paid the verification fee only once (based on the only feasible way to contribute — the $25 verification fee per year). The management has probably worked out, while they sip lattes over Zoom, that even if there is a mass exodus and those without any principles at all remain, they will still miraculously break even. In contrast, BeWelcome, a similar but much less popular platform, covered their finances with less than $10,000. BeWelcome is also completely transparent about their finances. Everyone who has used Couchsurfing knows that policy has slowly — although not imperceptibly — changed over the years. The sole aim since it changed from .org to .com has been to increase its membership and with that the hope that its members will pay to be verified under the controversial pretext that this makes the community safer. As a host, I can say this “safer” mantra is nonsense. It’s the references I care about. It’s what the community, not the bank, say about you that I care about. Of course, Couchsurfing will never die for good. Its apparition will live on in the memories of original users, their profiles as tombstones representing an age — however brief — where three great things: the internet, travel and the human spirit combined to create an enviable community accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Considering the incredible stories, the global relationships and shared interests of locals, there is little doubt that Couchsurfing changed the world. Just how many people turned a new era in their lives through a friendship which can be traced back to Couchsurfing? For a while it flew in the face of the monetisation of simple travel, even as a for-profit company it triumphed as the lefty nemesis of Airbnb and the boutique hostel craze which swept the world; now rearranging its company structure to join them, having long replaced the wording of its most fundamental function from “community” to “profit”. Over the last years, the true community still struggled on, creating events and meet-ups and ignoring the new requests from creepy men with empty profiles, while in the background $22.6 million was quietly being squandered to turn Couchsurfing into the next trendy startup venture. Many community organisations (wikipedia.org for example) which respect their user-base — indeed realise they are their user-base — have resorted to reaching out to their members in search of aid when times got tough, financial or otherwise. Even some newspapers, dammit, score morally higher by asking for donations rather than ransoms. Despite the recent drama, it’s already clear from Couchsurfing’s Privacy Policy that other money making outlets besides the ones they mention do exist: “We may engage a third party data provider who may collect web log data from you or place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser” “We may also share aggregated or de-identified information, which cannot reasonably be used to identify you.” They may not admit directly selling your data. But Couchsurfing allows other companies to collect it in exchange for advertising space, which is paid for. The key words here are “engage”, and “reasonably”, which means if you are a large company and have the means to to re-identify data, then ta-da! — those trackers which monitor clicks and people you interact with, many who are now linked to profiles on Facebook, combine to make a neat little profile for you, and the travel-themed adverts stack up higher than the empty iPhone boxes at the Couchsurfing headquarters, which is now closed from Covid19, by the way. But that probably didn’t work out for them, which is why they are now allegedly scrapping the advertising plan. Returning instead in true business-means-business style to the community, which after being neglected for years, they have suddenly realised they depend on. And may also realise no longer exists. But how can it be so bad? As of May 2020, it is one of the top 10,000 websites by Alexa rank, putting it in the top 0.001% of websites in the world — absolutely no mean feat. And certainly not in a position to be losing money. If Couchsurfing couldn’t make it work with that amount of traffic, and with multiple multi-million dollar investments, while simultaneously ignoring its community and deleting its oldest and most valued members, it deserves to die. Nobody asked for all the fancy graphics and apps they made for us. People that are willing to sleep on a stranger’s mattress can live with a few, em, bugs. If community powered websites like Reddit can survive, Couchsurfing could have survived too. Everyone that has used the site, even until very recently, will be grateful that it existed; its simple empowerment of people allowed everyone to get more of the best thing about it: the people we meet. If anything, it remains as a bleak lesson on the poisonous nature of replacing strength of community with financial capital. Now it’s time to shift away from what is essentially a company run by faceless people whose sole community is those in Silicon Valley; the only question remaining is, where do we go?
dannyw 6y ago
Why does couchsurfing.com need to be a $22.5m venture backed business? Not everything needs to be the next WeWork.
purple_ferret 6y ago
Didn't it basically turn into a hookup app at some point?
- Markoff 6y ago
  it can be whatever you want it to be i agree this become more common over the years, bit it's anyway easily avoidable through references or just by checking up sexuality, after all statistics are on your side, if you host person of same gender you are unlikely going into hook up
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    And even if one person is after the same gender, they wont just assume the other is without asking.
VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
Bro.. you gotta pay $15 a year. That's $1.25/month. I would like to see you make a website like Couchsurfing that can operate for free forever. Just pay the $buck 25 and keep using the site and go on with your life. This is not a Capitalist Conspiracy to rob you of your hard-earned $dollars
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- inimino 6y ago
  /s? I almost wonder if you've ever met anyone in need. This brand of smug entitlement preceeds revolutions ...bro.
  - Noos 6y ago
    If you are in need why on earth are you couchsurfing and traveling at all? If you cant afford $15 for the site what happens when you get sick or any emergency whatsoever forces you to shell out money?
    - inimino 6y ago
      Maybe a relative gets sick in a foreign country and you'd like to see them? Maybe you can't afford health care and you just get sick and die if you're in a first world democracy with American-class health care, or if you're in a civilized country, maybe they just treat you? I don't know, man, use your imagination.
      - valuearb 6y ago
        In America hospitals and emergency rooms are required to treat you.
        inimino 6y ago
        Then you are not "forced to shell out money" in such a case, yes?
gmargari 6y ago
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, messages, nothing. I'm really disappointed and sad, and I guess I'm also switching to BeWelcome.
- abyssin 6y ago
  Have a look at Trustroots, the management of the project is quite different and doesn't put the same emphasis on formal democratic processes as BeWelcome does, but it makes for a community that's closer to what seems to me the authentic couchsurfing spirit. All of these hospex networks brought me a lot anyway.
  - nicksellen 6y ago
    I'm one of the Trustroots contributors, you're right about the governance topic, we have a do-ocracy approach right now (described a bit at the bottom of https://www.trustroots.org/faq/foundation https://www.trustroots.org/faq/foundation). I'm actually keen to evolve this, with a more specific approach to community-governance, but this thinking and these talks take time.
    - abyssin 6y ago
      I'm perfectly happy with the current style of governance. It seems like it works, while BeWelcome is still struggling with endless babbling.
  - gmargari 6y ago
    Thanks for the link abyssin, indeed seems very interesting. Btw, I tried accessing my profile from Wayback Machine and got a nice "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine". Really Couchsurfing? Also, I forgot to mention that the message you get when you login to couchsurfing.com is a landing page that says: "Due to the impact of Covid-19, we need your immediate help to keep Couchsurfing alive" and then the only options you have are: 1. Pay with Credit Card 2. Pay with PayPal 3. Logout (https://imgur.com/g7QKHEt https://imgur.com/g7QKHEt) Their site totally looks like ransomware.
kragen 6y ago
https://archive.fo/6xEPW https://archive.fo/6xEPW The article makes this sound super shitty. What happens if you were traveling on May 14th in a country where you don't have cellphone service, trusting that you're going to use CouchSurfing to message your hosts to arrange to meet up when you arrive, and now you can't contact them any more? Either it's cough up the US$15 (assuming you even have a means of payment CouchSurfing accepts — I don't think they do M-PESA) or you're sleeping on the side of the road where your hitchhiking ride dropped you off. And US$15 is a fucking lot of money in some places. I've hosted a bunch of people via Couchsurfing and also been hosted. Another alternative I've used is hospitalityclub.org, which seems to still be up. The article and other comments here mention BeWelcome, but I haven't tried it. While I agree with comments that it shouldn't require hundreds of millions of dollars a year to run the site, and that we need to move community services like this onto decentralized systems, I think things like the Beaker Browser are not yet widespread enough. Communities like CouchSurfing where lots of people meet up in person and try new things might be the most fertile soil for something like that.
Ayesh 6y ago
It's about €2 a month, and I subscribed yesterday. It didn't occur to me until they prompted that CS must be doing pretty bad during the pandemic. I still open for Hangouts (I'm "stranded" in Vietnam where things are open back now), and the CS as a platform was fantastic to meet new people. I think the €2 price is only for those who live in relatively richer countries. Here in Vietnam, my friends were not asked to pay, it's just me because my address was set to the Netherlands. They even support PayPal payments, which I believe take ~€0.30 for the payment.
- dvcrn 6y ago
  This is interesting, so it's based on address? I am also a Hangouts user and never did actual 'couchsurfing' so seeing it disappear esp. in countries like Vietnam or Thailand is a sad thought. Still, having this paywall slapped on for the majority of users means that a lot of 'casual users' like me who open the app occassionally will fall away, which then means far less people available on Hangouts. Maybe someone else will step in and build a Hangout clone? Their app is a massive battery hog full of bugs, and I dread opening it every time I get a new message.
  - Ayesh 6y ago
    I think Couch Surfing (the activity) + hangouts work well because you can see how "cool" a person is based on their travel history.
- elbear 6y ago
  Well, I'm in Romania and I got the paywall, so it looks like we qualify as rich enough.
peterwwillis 6y ago
Couchsurfing is like a master class in how to destroy community engagement in your business/project. So, back before the ubiquity of 2 or 3 social media sites, CouchSurfing was a quirky place to meet travelers and let them crash on your couch. One of the things that made it work was profile reviews and couch requests. The second thing was the community forums. The profile reviews and couch requests acted as a quality filter. Bad reviews lead to much lower community engagement. An interesting profile and good reviews, combined with community instruction on how to compose a good request, leads to acceptance of couch requests. The system works as long as the community polices itself, teaches its values to new members, and encourages good behavior. The community forums were a huge part of facilitating all that. Profiles would often include instructions on how to behave, but the forums filled the gaps by adding social pressure to enforce standard conventions. They also ensured there was constant user engagement and content, which we know from modern social media sites is imperative for a vibrant community. All of that got flushed down the drain when Couchsurfing reorganized and annihilated their old site. All the community engagement fled to private Facebook groups. That caused profile quality to crash, and the result is anti-community behavior, like how the majority of single men on the platform now host only single women, which besides being sketch as hell, just makes it harder to find a reliable host. After I literally flew across the country just to have lunch with the Couchsurfing team and discuss the community problems I'd collected, I got the impression that they were not going to change. My concerns were mostly considered bug reports, and the problems that drove the community away were never addressed. Years later, it looks like no work has been done at all. I was grandfathered in as an older user so I never even realized they started charged you to send more than a certain number of couch requests. But why would any new user seriously commit to a community now? It can probably still be a place to meet amazing people, but you can also just meet amazing people anywhere you go in the world, without Couchsurfing. The saddest part of all of this is that now there won't be an amazing platform to show people how insanely generous humans are all over the world. Hopefully BeWelcome or another site can pick up the mantle and restore the old ways, so we can go back to showing more people the inherent goodness of strangers - when those strangers are tied together via community and purpose.
technick 6y ago
I used to host couch surfers in Denver. Everyone I met was amazing. Had a couple from Jamaica stay a few days and taught me how to cook jerk chicken. Then I hosted a group of 5 from Australia which put me up when I visited them. I hope something replaces this site.
- abyssin 6y ago
  There's already alternatives, and they've been there for a while. The first treason to the community came from Casy Fenton who sold Couchsurfing some 10 years ago, even though he'd benefited from the volunteer work of many skilled members. That triggered the creation of BeWelcome. Some years later, BeWelcome was perceived as suffering from different issues that were preventing it from growing to its potential, and Trustroots was founded as well. Trustroots is a promising project.
machiaweliczny 6y ago
My friends traveled half of the world thanks to CS. In developing counties it's usually richest people that host, so it's sometimes better than hotel, but often just tent in backyard (I think when no "hosts" in area)
soufron 6y ago
How could it be dead? Contrary to airbnb couchsurfing is not a company, it's a concept. And it has no running costs. People will just pause and get back to it later on.
- distances 6y ago
  Did you read the article?
Lapland 6y ago
Man that's a bad way to do it, and it makes me really sad. Couchsurfing has been awesome but this is probably good for the community long-term since the motives of a large part of the users and CS where wildly misaligned after becoming a for-profit corp. With the nail in the coffin hopefully this will lead to a migration to some platform run by the community itself. Trustroots seems like the best existing option right now for future development.
- peterburkimsher 6y ago
  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.
  - nicksellen 6y ago
    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 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-on-trustroots/ 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 next steps recently. We are also open source! https://github.com/trustroots/ https://github.com/trustroots/ (with a node + react stack)
    - h0l0cube 6y ago
      > We are also open source! This is a big deal actually. From what I've heard, One of the reasons why Hospitality Club fell into decline, was that the code-base was closed source and the original developer was reluctant to let go of it.
      - nicksellen 6y ago
        The open source bit allows the ultimate step of forking the whole project, and that is important to me to be able to do that, but it's not a trivial step at all, and a lot of the usefulness is in the name recognition and the userbase. But really, I want to contribute to the original project, and given I am not the original developer, it still relies on the them (and any other founders) to open up contributions. Fortunately, in this case, they have :)
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
Couchsurfing, I love you, but y'all have a horrible business model. Between 2017 & 2019, I hosted about Couchsurfers. I initially paid to verify my identity, and I paid a few dollars per quarter (I forget how much) to maintain my membership. Then I needed to change my credit card. There was literally no option to change my credit card. In order to change my credit card, I had to let me credit card expire. Wat. In there recent email about running out of money, they were looking for people to spend $2.49 USD/month or $14.99 USD/year. I was like "hey, I can finally support them!" So I clicked on the link, and because I already have a verified membership, there was still no option to pay. I contacted support asking how I could pay, and instead of giving me a way to send them cash, they gave me ANOTHER FREE YEAR of verified membership. Wat. Maybe start a Patreon? It'd be hard to screw that one up.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  Was supposed to say "hosted about 50 couch surfers".
m4lvin 6y ago
In related news, https://www.warmshowers.org/ https://www.warmshowers.org/ (a couchsurfing, but only for cyclists) also changed "business model" this month. However, they will not charge existing active users and only ask new sign-ups for 30 USD once for lifetime access. https://www.warmshowers.org/sites/default/files/files/inline/Announcement_English.pdf https://www.warmshowers.org/sites/default/files/files/inline...
- kpennell 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing. WS is a great case study. I've known a lot of people who have used it and it doesn't have the sexual harassment and/or hookup thing of CS. It also feels much more barebones, which I'd say people kind of like.
- justnotworthit 6y ago
  Did they do a "host only" free signup? I left couchsurfing (which i used mostly for hosting) to warmshowers where I've hosted a dozen or two guests over the last few years. I've never traveled on a bike and don't have any plans to. The guests are great, since bike touring is a filter for a certain kind of person. I don't know I would have signed up if it were $30 (though it has obviously been worth it). One of my "things to do when im rich" daydreams was to visit my favorite guests/host from CS in a world tour. Most I didn't exchange numbers or emails with, but having their good reviews on my profile was a monument of what the kind of person I wanted to be. If it's true I can't message them now, I should've got rich sooner.
enriquto 6y ago
...and do not forget about Pasporta Servo, which is a clear predecessor. The "pitch" for Couchsurfing may as well be "like Pasporta Servo, but without Esperanto".
- elrostelperien 6y ago
  Exactly! To explain Pasporta Servo to a friend (when I was "preaching" about Esperanto), I said the opposite: "It's Couchsurfing, but within the Esperanto community" – and also mentioned it being older than CS.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
I understand the need for monetization since it's a large community and running it will have some costs but it's weird they couldn't partner with some travel equipment goods firms and be done with it.
ZeWaren 6y ago
I'm very saddened by the news. To me couchsurfing was not only about hosting people to my place (which I hope I can continue doing after the pandemic) but also about their events. The weeks I couldn't or didn't feel like hosting strangers to my place, I could still meet random foreigners in bars or outside. My city had 3 weekly events in addition to random theme events, from board game nights and sport activities to cooking classes.
spiritplumber 6y ago
I ended up with two meth heads who sort of moved in and would not leave, they even tried to get me arrested for trespassing in my own home, supposedly on grounds of they were US citizens and I was not. Fortunately the cop that showed up spoke Italian and we sorted it out. It was weird. On the other hand, I have made three lifelong friends thanks to hospitality, so the balance is positive.
Chris2048 6y ago
For hosts that provide their guests with a bed: Are bed-bugs a concern? I can imagine bad hosting varied travellers who themselves may be sleeping in many different beds would be terrible for it.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  This was literally the answer I expected when I saw the title.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  * also, this should have read "bed-hosting"
matthewfelgate 6y ago
Couchsurfing died a long time ago. It used to be a good website until I guess it got sold.
roadbeats 6y ago
Couchsurfing was the website that allowed dozens of young people from developing countries to do world trips. Imagine being in your early twenties surrounded by limitations; no money, no job but a bright & open mind who wants to see the world, despite all the travel restrictions. Couchsurfing was the magic of internet that helped young & bright but not rich young people. Some investors bought it and killed it.
billme 6y ago
Couchsurfing die at some point long ago. I forget exactly what happened, but globally all their volunteers per city left.
netjiro 6y ago
I've had great experiences from couchsurfing. Hosting, surfing, and events. I've met several close friends through couchsurfing. I've heard about the negative experiences people have had, but never from direct source, always someone heard about someone. I have no clue about the actual numbers. The community died off with the mismanagement, but also shrunk from the rise of airbnb and meetup.
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JayPeaEm 6y ago
I've had nothing but amazing experiences with CouchSurfing. New Years Party in Budapest; A haunted house trip in Philadelphia turned into being a pretend boyfriend for a girl in Ürümqi and a week later flying to Maldives with her best friend; Playing ice hockey with the President of Finland; Having a fling with a famous Japanese MMA Fighter; I even started my website www.uncivil.engineer because of it; sad to see.
lx0741 6y ago
no wonder why their app sucks.. free is never great. imagine if amazon or google never changed their business models, they would've never become the useful things they are today, would they? if you pay, you get a better service, period.
- Dumblydorr 6y ago
  Do you though? Maybe there are users who only want the free product, to them couchsurfing for a fee is a worse model.
montychain 6y ago
Never heard of Couchsurfing and I'm quite shocked this idea was able to captivate a considerable amount of people. It all seems terrible to me. Invite a bunch of strangers to hang out in your house? What a terrible idea! Sure, not all people are morons or psychos but there are such people out there. And only one is all it takes to end or completely ruin your life. Risk a life to be able to hear a bunch of bullshit what some idiot has to say is totally not worth it imo. If you want to talk to an idiot - you can find plenty of them on Facebook or Twitter. At least it's safe. And for the real life communications just hang out with your family, classmates, coworkers or even neighbors. There are a thousand people that you know and have some sort of relation to. If you wanna date - use tinder or something. Be careful out there, if not for yourself but for those, who love you and care for you!
oytis 6y ago
Wonder how they survived for such a long time. I used to use it when I was a young adult with no family and little money, and stopped using it once I was not young any more, and had something to pay. My impression of my guests and hosts was that they were about the same kind of people as I was, so I'm not sure where they could ever get money from.
kpennell 6y ago
CS generated billions in social capital but that can be hard to monetize. I wish they had solicited donations sooner and not raised that 10M round. They could have started a Patreon or buy me coffee-esque donation model several years ago and people would have been down to help sustain them. It seems that mid 2000s internet knew how to use CS without being creepy but more and more of the 2010s internet just didn't. There were so many allegations of harassment and women not feeling comfortable. One woman traveler I met said if she even logged in in India, she would get 6-7 invites from men to stay with her. Seems like this 'travelers near you' feature maybe had some downsides. It's also just hard to stay relevant with the rise of facebook, airbnb, and reddit. It's a bummer they didn't stay more focused. Gosh, I would have loved to work for them back when I lived near the mission, but it sounds like it would have been incredibly frustrating.
ipnon 6y ago
Would it be impossible to federate a homestay social network like Couchsurfing?
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  TIL, on another thread, that Trustroots is actually open source. I used it once 5 years ago, and I think it has a lot of potential.
CSvibeMax 6y ago
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.
CSvibeMax 6y ago
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. Stay safe everyone. Have a good time! ~*~

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

thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago
I am a host, and will pretty much start hosting when semi-allowed to in Australia.
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turnipla 6y ago
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.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  I’ve never used couchsurfing. Can you elaborate a few more details for outsiders like myself who perhaps can’t read between the lines you’re drawing on the topic? It doesn’t seem that far disconnected from reality to posit that COVID has had some affect on this?
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    CS inititally grew through communities like hitchhikers, bicycle travelers, Rainbow Gathering hippies and other alternative demographics. For people driven by wanderlust and keen for a sense of community with other sympathetic people, government-enforced COVID travel restrictions may compel them to stay put for a while, but the virus itself won't put them off traveling and hosting for long. No one wants to give up on an entire lifestyle and peer group, and they are used to budgeting on the basis of spending relatively little on accommodation when they are on the road. Plus, hitchhikers and cycle-tourers are used to thinking about statistics, because their travel habits involve some measure of risk, and so, as horrific as some anecdotal accounts of COVID are, they are unlikely to fear the virus so much.
    - qu83rt 6y ago
      The person above claimed that hosts would be reluctant because visitors might have COVID, not that the travellers would be more reluctant.
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        A certain amount of people invested in the community will still be willing to host simply because they crave the social contact with other members. But besides that, a lot of passionate travelers are keen to host on CS because contributing in this way makes it more likely that they themselves will be able to save money on accommodation and meet interesting people when they travel. So, COVID won’t dissuade everyone from hosting.
        dvtrn 6y ago
        Is this your own opinion or, other than meticulously picking through couchsurfer forum posts, how does one gather the sentiment of such a large community of hosts?
  - peterburkimsher 6y ago
    CS started because someone messaged a load of university students so he could stay on their dorm room floor. I discovered it with a dumpster-diving friend in UCSB in 2009. It stays legal by involving no money. (Airbnb's subletting issues do not affect CS). Hosts let people stay in their house: whether a couch, sleeping bag, or spare room. Guests message hosts in advance, asking whether they can stay. Reply rates vary. It stays safe by a reference system. My girlfriend, parents, and everybody on the Internet knows exactly where I was sleeping each night. CS built a large community through word-of-mouth, and was non-profit until 2011. Then the admins decided to make it a B Corporation, and promised not to charge. BeWelcome was founded at that time. I stayed, and I'm glad I did, because I joined weekly meetups in Amsterdam, Kaohsiung, Taipei, Tainan, and Auckland, and made many great friends that way. If this were about COVID, a temporary fundraiser to help the admins get through this tough time is reasonable. A monthly fee is not. I can't do subscriptions. My visa will expire in 6 months, and then I'll need to leave - no more income, no more bank account, different SIM card. A friend who knows some people in HQ said that this had been planned for a while. Doing it now, while all the meetups are temporarily suspended, is cruel and foolish. Not consulting the membership is also unacceptable. I wish that internal reform will be possible, and the admins will change their mind. However, I worry that it may not happen, and that's why I think we should start exporting our data and creating new profiles on BeWelcome.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      BeWelcome was founded well before CS went corporate. And BW was founded by people upset at the direction Hospitality Club (an earlier community) had taken. Sure, BW absorbed some CS refugees in 2011, but many BW members were anxious about CS trends having too much influence on their own site.
- rdtwo 6y ago
  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

An alternative will rise eventually. Couch surfing is all about experiences, friendships, and not thinking about money. Any person creating the alternative will have to understand and accept that.

peterburkimsher 6y ago
BeWelcome is open-source, has been around for a decade already, and has excellent financial transparency. Their fundraising target for this year is 1300€. I've already contacted their developer to ask if I can help create a data import tool so people can easily transfer their C$ profiles. It's heartbreaking to see such a wonderful community be divided like this. There are no "rich" and "poor" countries, only ones with more inequality. Ideally I wish that the HQ would change their mind, but my support is now behind BeWelcome as the alternative. We must work together and stay united as a community. Travel will continue, despite government lockdowns. Contact tracing is much easier with hospex sites like BeWelcome than with 11 strangers in a hostel room. Economic troubles will lead people to cheaper alternatives. Even if C$ has been ruined by venture capitalists, giving freely and paying it forward will live on elsewhere. In case this message reaches the C$ investors in Silicon Valley, I don't hate you personally, and I wish that internal reform is possible so that we don't all have to flee to a new platform. But the new change, brought without consultation, is contrary to the principles that CS was founded on. CS is not Airbnb, nor is it a dating site, nor is it exclusive. Selling personal data and private messages didn't bother me too much - Facebook does the same. But trying to charge a monthly subscription from people who don't even have stable countries, never mind bank accounts, is totally ignorant. Change your mind, quickly, because the community is already one foot out of the door.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > create a data import tool so people can easily transfer their C$ profiles. This has been brought up in the past (there have been multiple waves of disgruntled CS members leaving for BW), but it is pretty clear that CS would consider this web scraping that violates their terms of service. CS does not provide any authorized way to export its profiles. EDIT: Sorry, I'm wrong. I left CS and chose to use only community-driven hospitality-exchange platforms pre-GDPR.

MattGaiser 6y ago

>If community powered websites like Reddit can survive Reddit is backed by venture capital and shifted heavily to be more advertiser friendly.

peterburkimsher 6y ago
I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure, given that it's run by venture capitalists, yet still remains free of ads and open to newcomers. Monetising CS is like demanding a signup fee to join HN: it will drastically change the community.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Hacker News is smaller than most major subreddits in terms of usage. 400 upvotes is considered a lot here. The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. It doesn't process money or really require a lot of content moderation either.
  - freddie_mercury 6y ago
    That is all true but the real answer is that it is run as a charity project by billionaires. So it doesn't need to be monetized.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      They probably source enough engineers on here to make it more bait rather than charity.
      - bigiain 6y ago
        There are very few billionaire charity projects that don't have some kind of bait stench associated with them... This site is a lot less brazen that, say the Gates Foundation or Jack Dorseys "all the strings attached" charity "donations", but there's no doubt it's run in the interests of YC and they're doing it for the benefits they get. Not that I begrudge them that. It just needs to be something you bear in mind when wondering about odd looking article rankings or apparent voting/submission patterns that evade the fraud detection... It's their space, they can do that if they want. I (and everyone else) needs to weight up the benefit to themselves against the benefit to the people in control, and determine whether to hang around here, or walk away. For me? They do an OK job of not taking too m much advantage of their ultimate power here. I'm mostly cool with them.

cmehdy 6y ago

Couchsurfing was fantastic in its early days, then came the era of using websites for just-a-little-bit-too-much-dating, then they went .com and tried to be "cool" with redesigns, eventually drowning the simplicity of their concept a little bit too much. That $25 yearly fee slapped onto everything, with no chance to even connect with previous contacts, is disappointing to say the least. No doubt that the meaning of "couchsurfing" will far outlast the website, especially now.

projektfu 6y ago
I still think it's pretty fantastic and I have had great experiences with it in the last 3 years. The design sucks but things like hangouts and meetups are worthwhile even for travelers who do not feel comfortable staying in someone's house.
starpilot 6y ago
There are creepy amounts of guys who only host young, attractive women. It used to be more like hosting anyone - young, old, any gender, and sharing travel tales.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
  This has been my vicarious experience. The friends of mine who were young, attractive women who tried Couchsurfing all ended up with creepy stories along the lines of "Oh yeah I stayed with this guy, and then — funny story — it turns out he only has one bed! Ho ho ho…"
nicbou 6y ago
Their app is also pretty bad, to the point it became standard to just exchange whatsapp numbers right off the bat to make communication possible. Couchsurfing has a great community, but it has been resting on its laurels for too long.

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aclimatt 6y ago

Like the article says and as applies to almost all failed startups / products, it can all be traced back to bad management. I've been a heavy CS user for over a decade, I've been to events at their (now defunct I suppose) office in SF, I met their CEO at the time (one of many) and even did a walk around the block chatting strategy with their VP of Product at the time. After building lifelong relationships through the platform, and comparing my experience as a user with management's side of the story, it was clear to me that they had very little understanding of their userbase. Couchsurfers are broke. By definition. Meeting people is a huge value add, and the longer you stay on the platform, the more you gravitate toward the "community spirit" and less "saving money" side of things. But you are kidding yourself if you think that first time CS users are on the platform for any other reason than squeezing a few more days out of a thin backpacking budget. Not only are they broke, but even the community often has an anti-money ethos. Just look at the outrage (as the article points out) when they switched to a B corporation. And it makes sense -- taking an inherently capitalist product (lodging) and building a community to make it free creates a very specific narrative. Therefore, the expectation that CS users, especially first-time, will pay even a dollar on the service is DOA. They need to make money (exactly how much is up for debate), but this isn't the way to do it. But that doesn't mean there aren't any other choices! CS Event sponsorships, cross-product integration (language learning, travel deals FFS), other corporate sponsorships, a more Airbnb-like private experience (maybe the community would hate that too, who knows), partnerships with local tourism authorities, discounted tour / event packages... None of these were even close to tried. I'm not at all advocating that Couchsurfing should have become Tripadvisor, but to barely even consider a few alternatives to nickel and diming a bunch of broke backpackers just shows that CS was on its way out long before COVID-19...

jeromegv 6y ago
It’s also possible that if the premise of your product is being free for broke people, there’s just no path to profitability or even subsistance. You always anger your base, whatever you do. And then your platform becomes irrelevant as it fails to adapt due to... lack of money.
- peterburkimsher 6y ago

projektfu 6y ago

There seems to be a lot of anger in my local community. Probably 10:1 angry vs. supportive. It's sad because this is the end of the sharing economy that got overrun by the gig economy. I'm not sure the network will move to another site, and there's a lot of friction to redraw all the lines of connection and reviews.

teruakohatu 6y ago

Couch surfing is not dead. In the adventure motorcycling community, there are this concept "tent spaces". It is like crowd surfing but instead of a couch, you get access to a toilet and space to pitch a tent. https://advrider.com/f/threads/tent-space-map-v2.1215147/ https://advrider.com/f/threads/tent-space-map-v2.1215147/

soord51 6y ago
Idk if you read the article but this is mostly about the couchsurfing website not the concept. They specify that even if the website is dead couchsurfing as an idea will move on in the article too.
Ayesh 6y ago
Warm Showers is also pretty good. It's mostly Europe focused cycling community, where you meet amazing cyclists with a decent garage and a night full of stories.

tdeck 6y ago

This really reminds me of how podcasts have gone. It used to be that nine out of ten podcasts I listened to had no ads - they were about spreading a message or having fun, or getting some personal recognition. They didn't have major overhead because it's cheap to come on once every week or two and chat with your buddies. Now, not only are there many high-quality professional podcasts, but the old fashioned ones I enjoy have all one by one gotten in on the game. Eventually podcasting became something you either made money at or you were doing it wrong (see also: blogs). When even BackStory and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe are shilling for Blue Apron that transition is complete.

alexashka 6y ago
If you're looking for people who are still having silly fun, have a look at Twitch and the folks over at 'just chatting' or I think there's a section specifically for programming? Those channels very much have that informal vibe. Regarding making money or doing it wrong - says who? The barrier to entry for podcasting has never been lower. It's all in people's heads :)
Dumblydorr 6y ago
It's capitalism, many people have Bills that need paying and they don't have the incredible resources many of us on HN do.

owenversteeg 6y ago

So I imagine there's a lot of people here that don't know Couchsurfing or what the big deal is. Couchsurfing has been one of the most important things in my life, so I'll do my best to explain why it's so special. The basic idea is you stay at a stranger's place, or you host a stranger at yours - completely for free, no money involved. Everyone does it differently. Some people plan their trip meticulously months in advance and give arrival times to the minute, while others send a message at 9pm the same night asking if you're free. Some people ask to stay one night, some three, some far more; some bring bags of delicious food and artwork of their culture and some bring nothing. I mostly host, and I've had all of the above - and then some. You have an incredibly diverse group of people. I've met artists, musicians, dancers - everyone from a Syrian man who lived under ISIS for years to an evangelical Christian woman who wanted to try shrooms. The beautiful thing is that it's anything you want it to be. People have profiles that are often filled out with a good amount of detail (I usually skip the skimpy profiles) so you can pick out whoever or whatever you want. You want a pastry chef? You want a violinist? You want an architect? You want someone tidy and on-time or a hitchhiking hippie? Simply search for one to host or stay with. The friendships and relationships I've made through Couchsurfing have been some of the best and most interesting I could have asked for. And the best part - you can do it all from home, traveling the world from the comfort of your couch. Anyway, that's the beauty of it. I really hope that the network of people can be saved. Long term, I think it can, with something like BeWelcome, but of course it's a network effect problem - no hosts=no guests. If anyone is curious about Couchsurfing (or wants to couchsurf my boat in the Netherlands - seriously, anyone is welcome, please come!) then feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile.)

morganherlocker 6y ago
I had a similar experience with the couchsurfing community 6 or 7 years ago. Beyond the basic hosting concept, there was also a large group of people who would meet up regularly in my city, which made it really easy to find activities for the guests you had in town. I really hope they find a way to keep going.
alexashka 6y ago
Thanks for sharing. Couchsurfing is so interesting. Its success relies on it never becoming mainstream. It's like those word-of-mouth-only parties that are so great but if enough people hear about them, they are no longer any good. I had a similar experience with drum circles in Toronto, Canada. They were this hippie heaven of people coming together in a park and playing drums once a week in the summertime. Other people would come by and picnic, sit around, dance, hula hoop, whatever. Once it got popular enough, the park would be littered by the end of the day, so local residents complained and got drum circles banned, so we don't have drum circles anymore, because they were too good and a complete non-profit :)

vvpan 6y ago

An aside: Why does Medium add a login wall to some articles? Creating an account on a website to read somebody's blog post to me sounds... excessive.

DanielleMolloy 6y ago
We’ve been considering moving our labs‘ blog there (because less maintenance, higher visibility in tech academic communities) and have been wondering about this too. Can someone comment? Are they aiming towards raising a login wall for the whole platform?
- gnicholas 6y ago
  You can make all your articles free/unpaywalled if you want. But then if a publication wants to add your article, they can’t. Only paywalled articles can be added to publications.

gumby 6y ago

Would Covid-19 have put an end to the travels of Paul Erdős? That would have been a tragedy.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Coachsurfing explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOUobuGaY7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOUobuGaY7U

JSavageOne 6y ago

More reason to move towards a free and open source decentralized web. Otherwise a beautiful community over a decade in the making can be obliterated by the flick of a switch of a couple money-hungry idiots wearing suits.

EGreg 6y ago
Yes! https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform It’s here use it
Polylactic_acid 6y ago
I feel like the biggest money drain for any community website is not server or development fees, its moderation and community management. You cant just stick up a php app on a vps and let it run forever for $3/month. You have to hire people to remove spam and to read user reports to remove rapists and creeps from the platform.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Hell just plain ole support. I got locked out of my Couchsurfing account twice and getting in was a pain. I also dispute the "get a VPS and ship it" for 3/month -- there are a lot of images on Couchsurfing, and a userbase that's non-trivial in terms of size.

husky_voice 6y ago

Can't read story about Couchsurfing paywall as the article is behind paywall ;)

Markoff 6y ago
Well folks, in these changed times it seems that the last artefacts of the old world have been firmly cemented in history, as Couchsurfing International Inc. decides to unilaterally charge its members, eroding away the last remnants of community spirit and hammering the final nail in the capitalist coffin it built for itself. The fact Couchsurfing didn’t warn or consult the community it hosts that the company was switching to a paid service, effective immediately as of 14th May 2020, only underlines the already poor track record of the management. Just in case you weren’t sure how mainstream the service went, they’ve gone and removed all doubt. In order to simply message old friends through the site, people who you warmly welcomed into your home, who kindly hosted you in a strange foreign land — or who perhaps changed your life — you must now pay a subscription fee. Users have essentially had their accounts frozen unless they pay the fee immediately. The bosses of Couchsurfing know how much these old connections mean to some members, so in one final hustle have blocked messaging and even referencing, forcing those who have no other communication links to sign up for at least a month to speak to their friends, and hoping for a little bonus before the gentrified party is over for good. It also means those that use the site only for hosting, in other words, offer their homes to others for free, have to pay the fee too. This should kick out the remaining ethically-minded members. Leaving only noobs and those that want to save money when travelling to run the whole show. To be fair, $15 a year is not a lot to ask. But the way they asked shows everybody exactly where Couchsurfing stands.
- Markoff 6y ago
  Couchsurfing admits on its own blog that 4% of its users have contributed to the platform before the recent announcement. Considering that at time of writing it has well over 15 million users, at 4% that’s at least $15 million dollars alone if everyone paid the verification fee only once (based on the only feasible way to contribute — the $25 verification fee per year). The management has probably worked out, while they sip lattes over Zoom, that even if there is a mass exodus and those without any principles at all remain, they will still miraculously break even. In contrast, BeWelcome, a similar but much less popular platform, covered their finances with less than $10,000. BeWelcome is also completely transparent about their finances. Everyone who has used Couchsurfing knows that policy has slowly — although not imperceptibly — changed over the years. The sole aim since it changed from .org to .com has been to increase its membership and with that the hope that its members will pay to be verified under the controversial pretext that this makes the community safer. As a host, I can say this “safer” mantra is nonsense. It’s the references I care about. It’s what the community, not the bank, say about you that I care about. Of course, Couchsurfing will never die for good. Its apparition will live on in the memories of original users, their profiles as tombstones representing an age — however brief — where three great things: the internet, travel and the human spirit combined to create an enviable community accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Considering the incredible stories, the global relationships and shared interests of locals, there is little doubt that Couchsurfing changed the world. Just how many people turned a new era in their lives through a friendship which can be traced back to Couchsurfing? For a while it flew in the face of the monetisation of simple travel, even as a for-profit company it triumphed as the lefty nemesis of Airbnb and the boutique hostel craze which swept the world; now rearranging its company structure to join them, having long replaced the wording of its most fundamental function from “community” to “profit”. Over the last years, the true community still struggled on, creating events and meet-ups and ignoring the new requests from creepy men with empty profiles, while in the background $22.6 million was quietly being squandered to turn Couchsurfing into the next trendy startup venture. Many community organisations (wikipedia.org for example) which respect their user-base — indeed realise they are their user-base — have resorted to reaching out to their members in search of aid when times got tough, financial or otherwise. Even some newspapers, dammit, score morally higher by asking for donations rather than ransoms. Despite the recent drama, it’s already clear from Couchsurfing’s Privacy Policy that other money making outlets besides the ones they mention do exist: “We may engage a third party data provider who may collect web log data from you or place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser” “We may also share aggregated or de-identified information, which cannot reasonably be used to identify you.” They may not admit directly selling your data. But Couchsurfing allows other companies to collect it in exchange for advertising space, which is paid for. The key words here are “engage”, and “reasonably”, which means if you are a large company and have the means to to re-identify data, then ta-da! — those trackers which monitor clicks and people you interact with, many who are now linked to profiles on Facebook, combine to make a neat little profile for you, and the travel-themed adverts stack up higher than the empty iPhone boxes at the Couchsurfing headquarters, which is now closed from Covid19, by the way. But that probably didn’t work out for them, which is why they are now allegedly scrapping the advertising plan. Returning instead in true business-means-business style to the community, which after being neglected for years, they have suddenly realised they depend on. And may also realise no longer exists. But how can it be so bad? As of May 2020, it is one of the top 10,000 websites by Alexa rank, putting it in the top 0.001% of websites in the world — absolutely no mean feat. And certainly not in a position to be losing money. If Couchsurfing couldn’t make it work with that amount of traffic, and with multiple multi-million dollar investments, while simultaneously ignoring its community and deleting its oldest and most valued members, it deserves to die. Nobody asked for all the fancy graphics and apps they made for us. People that are willing to sleep on a stranger’s mattress can live with a few, em, bugs. If community powered websites like Reddit can survive, Couchsurfing could have survived too. Everyone that has used the site, even until very recently, will be grateful that it existed; its simple empowerment of people allowed everyone to get more of the best thing about it: the people we meet. If anything, it remains as a bleak lesson on the poisonous nature of replacing strength of community with financial capital. Now it’s time to shift away from what is essentially a company run by faceless people whose sole community is those in Silicon Valley; the only question remaining is, where do we go?

dannyw 6y ago

Why does couchsurfing.com need to be a $22.5m venture backed business? Not everything needs to be the next WeWork.

purple_ferret 6y ago

Didn't it basically turn into a hookup app at some point?

Markoff 6y ago
it can be whatever you want it to be i agree this become more common over the years, bit it's anyway easily avoidable through references or just by checking up sexuality, after all statistics are on your side, if you host person of same gender you are unlikely going into hook up
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  And even if one person is after the same gender, they wont just assume the other is without asking.

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago

Bro.. you gotta pay $15 a year. That's $1.25/month. I would like to see you make a website like Couchsurfing that can operate for free forever. Just pay the $buck 25 and keep using the site and go on with your life. This is not a Capitalist Conspiracy to rob you of your hard-earned $dollars

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inimino 6y ago
/s? I almost wonder if you've ever met anyone in need. This brand of smug entitlement preceeds revolutions ...bro.
- Noos 6y ago
  If you are in need why on earth are you couchsurfing and traveling at all? If you cant afford $15 for the site what happens when you get sick or any emergency whatsoever forces you to shell out money?
  - inimino 6y ago
    Maybe a relative gets sick in a foreign country and you'd like to see them? Maybe you can't afford health care and you just get sick and die if you're in a first world democracy with American-class health care, or if you're in a civilized country, maybe they just treat you? I don't know, man, use your imagination.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      In America hospitals and emergency rooms are required to treat you.
      - inimino 6y ago
        Then you are not "forced to shell out money" in such a case, yes?

gmargari 6y ago

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, messages, nothing. I'm really disappointed and sad, and I guess I'm also switching to BeWelcome.

abyssin 6y ago
Have a look at Trustroots, the management of the project is quite different and doesn't put the same emphasis on formal democratic processes as BeWelcome does, but it makes for a community that's closer to what seems to me the authentic couchsurfing spirit. All of these hospex networks brought me a lot anyway.
- nicksellen 6y ago
  I'm one of the Trustroots contributors, you're right about the governance topic, we have a do-ocracy approach right now (described a bit at the bottom of https://www.trustroots.org/faq/foundation https://www.trustroots.org/faq/foundation). I'm actually keen to evolve this, with a more specific approach to community-governance, but this thinking and these talks take time.
  - abyssin 6y ago
    I'm perfectly happy with the current style of governance. It seems like it works, while BeWelcome is still struggling with endless babbling.
- gmargari 6y ago
  Thanks for the link abyssin, indeed seems very interesting. Btw, I tried accessing my profile from Wayback Machine and got a nice "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine". Really Couchsurfing? Also, I forgot to mention that the message you get when you login to couchsurfing.com is a landing page that says: "Due to the impact of Covid-19, we need your immediate help to keep Couchsurfing alive" and then the only options you have are: 1. Pay with Credit Card 2. Pay with PayPal 3. Logout (https://imgur.com/g7QKHEt https://imgur.com/g7QKHEt) Their site totally looks like ransomware.

kragen 6y ago

https://archive.fo/6xEPW https://archive.fo/6xEPW The article makes this sound super shitty. What happens if you were traveling on May 14th in a country where you don't have cellphone service, trusting that you're going to use CouchSurfing to message your hosts to arrange to meet up when you arrive, and now you can't contact them any more? Either it's cough up the US$15 (assuming you even have a means of payment CouchSurfing accepts — I don't think they do M-PESA) or you're sleeping on the side of the road where your hitchhiking ride dropped you off. And US$15 is a fucking lot of money in some places. I've hosted a bunch of people via Couchsurfing and also been hosted. Another alternative I've used is hospitalityclub.org, which seems to still be up. The article and other comments here mention BeWelcome, but I haven't tried it. While I agree with comments that it shouldn't require hundreds of millions of dollars a year to run the site, and that we need to move community services like this onto decentralized systems, I think things like the Beaker Browser are not yet widespread enough. Communities like CouchSurfing where lots of people meet up in person and try new things might be the most fertile soil for something like that.

Ayesh 6y ago

It's about €2 a month, and I subscribed yesterday. It didn't occur to me until they prompted that CS must be doing pretty bad during the pandemic. I still open for Hangouts (I'm "stranded" in Vietnam where things are open back now), and the CS as a platform was fantastic to meet new people. I think the €2 price is only for those who live in relatively richer countries. Here in Vietnam, my friends were not asked to pay, it's just me because my address was set to the Netherlands. They even support PayPal payments, which I believe take ~€0.30 for the payment.

dvcrn 6y ago
This is interesting, so it's based on address? I am also a Hangouts user and never did actual 'couchsurfing' so seeing it disappear esp. in countries like Vietnam or Thailand is a sad thought. Still, having this paywall slapped on for the majority of users means that a lot of 'casual users' like me who open the app occassionally will fall away, which then means far less people available on Hangouts. Maybe someone else will step in and build a Hangout clone? Their app is a massive battery hog full of bugs, and I dread opening it every time I get a new message.
- Ayesh 6y ago
  I think Couch Surfing (the activity) + hangouts work well because you can see how "cool" a person is based on their travel history.
elbear 6y ago
Well, I'm in Romania and I got the paywall, so it looks like we qualify as rich enough.

peterwwillis 6y ago

Couchsurfing is like a master class in how to destroy community engagement in your business/project. So, back before the ubiquity of 2 or 3 social media sites, CouchSurfing was a quirky place to meet travelers and let them crash on your couch. One of the things that made it work was profile reviews and couch requests. The second thing was the community forums. The profile reviews and couch requests acted as a quality filter. Bad reviews lead to much lower community engagement. An interesting profile and good reviews, combined with community instruction on how to compose a good request, leads to acceptance of couch requests. The system works as long as the community polices itself, teaches its values to new members, and encourages good behavior. The community forums were a huge part of facilitating all that. Profiles would often include instructions on how to behave, but the forums filled the gaps by adding social pressure to enforce standard conventions. They also ensured there was constant user engagement and content, which we know from modern social media sites is imperative for a vibrant community. All of that got flushed down the drain when Couchsurfing reorganized and annihilated their old site. All the community engagement fled to private Facebook groups. That caused profile quality to crash, and the result is anti-community behavior, like how the majority of single men on the platform now host only single women, which besides being sketch as hell, just makes it harder to find a reliable host. After I literally flew across the country just to have lunch with the Couchsurfing team and discuss the community problems I'd collected, I got the impression that they were not going to change. My concerns were mostly considered bug reports, and the problems that drove the community away were never addressed. Years later, it looks like no work has been done at all. I was grandfathered in as an older user so I never even realized they started charged you to send more than a certain number of couch requests. But why would any new user seriously commit to a community now? It can probably still be a place to meet amazing people, but you can also just meet amazing people anywhere you go in the world, without Couchsurfing. The saddest part of all of this is that now there won't be an amazing platform to show people how insanely generous humans are all over the world. Hopefully BeWelcome or another site can pick up the mantle and restore the old ways, so we can go back to showing more people the inherent goodness of strangers - when those strangers are tied together via community and purpose.

technick 6y ago

I used to host couch surfers in Denver. Everyone I met was amazing. Had a couple from Jamaica stay a few days and taught me how to cook jerk chicken. Then I hosted a group of 5 from Australia which put me up when I visited them. I hope something replaces this site.

abyssin 6y ago
There's already alternatives, and they've been there for a while. The first treason to the community came from Casy Fenton who sold Couchsurfing some 10 years ago, even though he'd benefited from the volunteer work of many skilled members. That triggered the creation of BeWelcome. Some years later, BeWelcome was perceived as suffering from different issues that were preventing it from growing to its potential, and Trustroots was founded as well. Trustroots is a promising project.

machiaweliczny 6y ago

My friends traveled half of the world thanks to CS. In developing counties it's usually richest people that host, so it's sometimes better than hotel, but often just tent in backyard (I think when no "hosts" in area)

soufron 6y ago

How could it be dead? Contrary to airbnb couchsurfing is not a company, it's a concept. And it has no running costs. People will just pause and get back to it later on.

distances 6y ago
Did you read the article?

Lapland 6y ago

Man that's a bad way to do it, and it makes me really sad. Couchsurfing has been awesome but this is probably good for the community long-term since the motives of a large part of the users and CS where wildly misaligned after becoming a for-profit corp. With the nail in the coffin hopefully this will lead to a migration to some platform run by the community itself. Trustroots seems like the best existing option right now for future development.

peterburkimsher 6y ago
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.
- nicksellen 6y ago
  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 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-on-trustroots/ 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 next steps recently. We are also open source! https://github.com/trustroots/ https://github.com/trustroots/ (with a node + react stack)
  - h0l0cube 6y ago
    > We are also open source! This is a big deal actually. From what I've heard, One of the reasons why Hospitality Club fell into decline, was that the code-base was closed source and the original developer was reluctant to let go of it.
    - nicksellen 6y ago
      The open source bit allows the ultimate step of forking the whole project, and that is important to me to be able to do that, but it's not a trivial step at all, and a lot of the usefulness is in the name recognition and the userbase. But really, I want to contribute to the original project, and given I am not the original developer, it still relies on the them (and any other founders) to open up contributions. Fortunately, in this case, they have :)

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

Couchsurfing, I love you, but y'all have a horrible business model. Between 2017 & 2019, I hosted about Couchsurfers. I initially paid to verify my identity, and I paid a few dollars per quarter (I forget how much) to maintain my membership. Then I needed to change my credit card. There was literally no option to change my credit card. In order to change my credit card, I had to let me credit card expire. Wat. In there recent email about running out of money, they were looking for people to spend $2.49 USD/month or $14.99 USD/year. I was like "hey, I can finally support them!" So I clicked on the link, and because I already have a verified membership, there was still no option to pay. I contacted support asking how I could pay, and instead of giving me a way to send them cash, they gave me ANOTHER FREE YEAR of verified membership. Wat. Maybe start a Patreon? It'd be hard to screw that one up.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
Was supposed to say "hosted about 50 couch surfers".

m4lvin 6y ago

In related news, https://www.warmshowers.org/ https://www.warmshowers.org/ (a couchsurfing, but only for cyclists) also changed "business model" this month. However, they will not charge existing active users and only ask new sign-ups for 30 USD once for lifetime access. https://www.warmshowers.org/sites/default/files/files/inline/Announcement_English.pdf https://www.warmshowers.org/sites/default/files/files/inline...

kpennell 6y ago
Thanks for sharing. WS is a great case study. I've known a lot of people who have used it and it doesn't have the sexual harassment and/or hookup thing of CS. It also feels much more barebones, which I'd say people kind of like.
justnotworthit 6y ago
Did they do a "host only" free signup? I left couchsurfing (which i used mostly for hosting) to warmshowers where I've hosted a dozen or two guests over the last few years. I've never traveled on a bike and don't have any plans to. The guests are great, since bike touring is a filter for a certain kind of person. I don't know I would have signed up if it were $30 (though it has obviously been worth it). One of my "things to do when im rich" daydreams was to visit my favorite guests/host from CS in a world tour. Most I didn't exchange numbers or emails with, but having their good reviews on my profile was a monument of what the kind of person I wanted to be. If it's true I can't message them now, I should've got rich sooner.

enriquto 6y ago

...and do not forget about Pasporta Servo, which is a clear predecessor. The "pitch" for Couchsurfing may as well be "like Pasporta Servo, but without Esperanto".

elrostelperien 6y ago
Exactly! To explain Pasporta Servo to a friend (when I was "preaching" about Esperanto), I said the opposite: "It's Couchsurfing, but within the Esperanto community" – and also mentioned it being older than CS.

LoSboccacc 6y ago

I understand the need for monetization since it's a large community and running it will have some costs but it's weird they couldn't partner with some travel equipment goods firms and be done with it.

ZeWaren 6y ago

I'm very saddened by the news. To me couchsurfing was not only about hosting people to my place (which I hope I can continue doing after the pandemic) but also about their events. The weeks I couldn't or didn't feel like hosting strangers to my place, I could still meet random foreigners in bars or outside. My city had 3 weekly events in addition to random theme events, from board game nights and sport activities to cooking classes.

spiritplumber 6y ago

I ended up with two meth heads who sort of moved in and would not leave, they even tried to get me arrested for trespassing in my own home, supposedly on grounds of they were US citizens and I was not. Fortunately the cop that showed up spoke Italian and we sorted it out. It was weird. On the other hand, I have made three lifelong friends thanks to hospitality, so the balance is positive.

Chris2048 6y ago

For hosts that provide their guests with a bed: Are bed-bugs a concern? I can imagine bad hosting varied travellers who themselves may be sleeping in many different beds would be terrible for it.

at_a_remove 6y ago
This was literally the answer I expected when I saw the title.
Chris2048 6y ago
* also, this should have read "bed-hosting"

matthewfelgate 6y ago

Couchsurfing died a long time ago. It used to be a good website until I guess it got sold.

roadbeats 6y ago

Couchsurfing was the website that allowed dozens of young people from developing countries to do world trips. Imagine being in your early twenties surrounded by limitations; no money, no job but a bright & open mind who wants to see the world, despite all the travel restrictions. Couchsurfing was the magic of internet that helped young & bright but not rich young people. Some investors bought it and killed it.

billme 6y ago

Couchsurfing die at some point long ago. I forget exactly what happened, but globally all their volunteers per city left.

netjiro 6y ago

I've had great experiences from couchsurfing. Hosting, surfing, and events. I've met several close friends through couchsurfing. I've heard about the negative experiences people have had, but never from direct source, always someone heard about someone. I have no clue about the actual numbers. The community died off with the mismanagement, but also shrunk from the rise of airbnb and meetup.

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JayPeaEm 6y ago

I've had nothing but amazing experiences with CouchSurfing. New Years Party in Budapest; A haunted house trip in Philadelphia turned into being a pretend boyfriend for a girl in Ürümqi and a week later flying to Maldives with her best friend; Playing ice hockey with the President of Finland; Having a fling with a famous Japanese MMA Fighter; I even started my website www.uncivil.engineer because of it; sad to see.

lx0741 6y ago

no wonder why their app sucks.. free is never great. imagine if amazon or google never changed their business models, they would've never become the useful things they are today, would they? if you pay, you get a better service, period.

Dumblydorr 6y ago
Do you though? Maybe there are users who only want the free product, to them couchsurfing for a fee is a worse model.

montychain 6y ago

Never heard of Couchsurfing and I'm quite shocked this idea was able to captivate a considerable amount of people. It all seems terrible to me. Invite a bunch of strangers to hang out in your house? What a terrible idea! Sure, not all people are morons or psychos but there are such people out there. And only one is all it takes to end or completely ruin your life. Risk a life to be able to hear a bunch of bullshit what some idiot has to say is totally not worth it imo. If you want to talk to an idiot - you can find plenty of them on Facebook or Twitter. At least it's safe. And for the real life communications just hang out with your family, classmates, coworkers or even neighbors. There are a thousand people that you know and have some sort of relation to. If you wanna date - use tinder or something. Be careful out there, if not for yourself but for those, who love you and care for you!

oytis 6y ago

Wonder how they survived for such a long time. I used to use it when I was a young adult with no family and little money, and stopped using it once I was not young any more, and had something to pay. My impression of my guests and hosts was that they were about the same kind of people as I was, so I'm not sure where they could ever get money from.

kpennell 6y ago

CS generated billions in social capital but that can be hard to monetize. I wish they had solicited donations sooner and not raised that 10M round. They could have started a Patreon or buy me coffee-esque donation model several years ago and people would have been down to help sustain them. It seems that mid 2000s internet knew how to use CS without being creepy but more and more of the 2010s internet just didn't. There were so many allegations of harassment and women not feeling comfortable. One woman traveler I met said if she even logged in in India, she would get 6-7 invites from men to stay with her. Seems like this 'travelers near you' feature maybe had some downsides. It's also just hard to stay relevant with the rise of facebook, airbnb, and reddit. It's a bummer they didn't stay more focused. Gosh, I would have loved to work for them back when I lived near the mission, but it sounds like it would have been incredibly frustrating.

ipnon 6y ago

Would it be impossible to federate a homestay social network like Couchsurfing?

h0l0cube 6y ago
TIL, on another thread, that Trustroots is actually open source. I used it once 5 years ago, and I think it has a lot of potential.

CSvibeMax 6y ago

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.

CSvibeMax 6y ago