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It's depressing, because AirBnB is a solid idea, if they can work some of the minor (ha!) kinks, like this, out of the system. But after falling flat on their
by pseudonym 15y ago
It's depressing, because AirBnB is a solid idea, if they can work some of the minor (ha!) kinks, like this, out of the system.
But after falling flat on their face like this, I wouldn't be surprised to see the idea of "social housing" go the same way as the Zeppelin did after the Hindenberg. It's going to be forever tied to every homeowner's worst nightmare.
- moonlighter 15y agoIt's certainly going to be interesting to see how AirBnB handles this going forward. So far, it's pretty much been a textbook version of how not to handle it, and given the HN audience, there are a lot of lessons to be drawn from this.
- protomyth 15y agoThe problem is that this is AirBnB's 2nd to worst case scenario and it doesn't look like it is going to turn out well for them or that they gamed the possible problem scenarios out before hand and created a set of responses. No one died, so there is no "AirBnB Killer" in the headlines, but it might make the host side a little more scarce. Hysteria and PR can both overcome facts. Heck, look at the people in the articles comments quoting the McDonald's coffee incident and believing the "common wisdom" it was a lawsuit happy lady. McDonald's PR did a heck of a job on that one given how absolutely, positively wrong they were and how bad their behavior and actions were. I just cannot believe they didn't think this might be a consequence of the scaling of their service. It happens to every community based service as soon as it gets out of the initial, early adopter group. Startups need to take the time to figure out how to deal with "bad actors" in their business model, particularly when the potential damage is high and of a new type.