> There was a massive spike in users on the site under Espinoza, but because they’d been attracted in part by an advertising push and there was an easier onboar

> There was a massive spike in users on the site under Espinoza, but because they’d been attracted in part by an advertising push and there was an easier onboarding process, they were less committed and slower to adapt to the pay-it-forward spirit of Couchsurfing. Suddenly, there were a ton of people who were active surfers and relatively few who were actively hosting. So it started taking surfers longer to find hosts. Organically grown communities are both more durable and more fragile. Durable if not tampered with or commercialized, fragile otherwise.