I have been hosting 30+ people in Montevideo, Uruguay since 2011 and while I find CouchSurfing not as beautiful/user-friendly as AirBnb I really don't care. And

I have been hosting 30+ people in Montevideo, Uruguay since 2011 and while I find CouchSurfing not as beautiful/user-friendly as AirBnb I really don't care. And I am a designer. The community at least in my country is and still really strong. I haven't had a single problem whatsoever and It really changed me for the better in an immeasurable way. Maybe other startup can hit the nail on the usability, credibility, signal-to-noise ratio. As a host who receive +5req / weekly, the main filter is always yourself. You need to do your due-diligence (aka stalking) and set your own rules. There's way more good people than bad people. Fortunately I haven't find one of the latter. TL;DR; Join. So far there's no other community like couchsurfing, take the best of it. It will impact you deeply.