Lost Roots: The Failure of For-Profit Couchsurfing

November 18, 2013 6:56 AM

As a long-time Couchsurfer, I felt that once management put the values of venture capital funders over the organic, self-organized traveler base, and reorganized with a top-down, “start-up” mentality, the fall was inevitable.
posted by Blasdelb (48 comments total)

Huh, wow. I had admired the CS model, and while I never really got into it, I have an ex-roommate who was a huge fan. I'll bet he's as aggrieved as Coca about the Friendsterization of the site.
posted by psoas at 7:05 AM on November 18, 2013

Yes, huge bummer, I'd always hoped to do a couchsurfing style trip one day. I hope some kind of couch-phoenix gets resurrected, it certainly seemed like something that should be a non-profit or along the lines of a craigslist where some niche of the site supports the non-financial side.
posted by sammyo at 7:11 AM on November 18, 2013

I say we take off and nuke the entire MBA course from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
posted by jaduncan at 7:11 AM on November 18, 2013 [22 favorites]

Oh, and for cyclists there's still Warm Showers. I hope that stays pure for a while.
posted by jaduncan at 7:14 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Sad. I surfed and hosted a few times a few years ago with really good, if not prefect, results. I can absolutely see how a site and community like this would crumble under the fist of corporate management.

Sad, sad.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:18 AM on November 18, 2013

How was Couchsurfing funded before the VC? I ask because this statement:

Couchsurfing didn’t have to go private. Members, like me, would have been willing to donate to the site if they could show, with full transparency, how money was being spent, and allow for greater participation in development.

Doesn't really mesh with what I understand about a website offering that level of service to ~6 million members.
posted by griphus at 7:30 AM on November 18, 2013 [5 favorites]

It is certainly possible that poor management killed Couchsurfing. But then there's a little thing called Air BnB.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:35 AM on November 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

The key there being "and allow for greater participation in development." Democracy is hard, and when the democratic system is as optional as Couchsurfing, it means a lot of people on the wrong side of every 51-49 vote are going to bail. It's a lot easier to deal with 10 VCs who kicked in $5M each than 1,000,000 users who kicked in $50 each and demand that their voice be heard (especially since "I want to be heard" actually means "I want my way").

Rock, meet hard place.
posted by Etrigan at 7:39 AM on November 18, 2013 [5 favorites]

It's indicative of the movement of the web in general away from kludge-y barter systems and community-made content into slick corporate accessibility. Which would you rather have--a cheap low-budget community of people offering their spaces for free and building a community with hard work? Or a super smooth experience of renting a space from the same friendly folks and subsequently renting out your own with a few pushes of a button? Would you rather read a forum about a place or see some ads and read a slick travel journal with beautiful pictures? Would you rather get something that requires effort or pay for something that requires no time at all?

The best part about this decision is that it is being made for us!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:40 AM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

Potomac Avenue: I don't think Air BnB had much to do with CS's downfall. There's not that much overlap between people who want to share their home with travelers and people who want to rent out rooms/apartments. It's just a completely different motivation.

Couchsurfers deciding to pick up and move to Air BnB would be like, i dunno, whipping out your wallet after thanksgiving dinner and asking Aunt Ida how much you owe her.
posted by tkfu at 7:42 AM on November 18, 2013 [5 favorites]

I agree its a different motivation, but I don't agree that it isn't the same exact people.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:42 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

From the comments: "guys on CS think cause they are putting up a girl for free, they think they should get something in return. Many of my other female friends have also stopped using CS cause of this. In all my Airbnb experiences, there is a level of professionalism due to it being a financial transaction so yes, paying money does make it safer."

Apparently there's also very little that can't be ruined by sleazy dickheads.
posted by jaduncan at 7:43 AM on November 18, 2013 [35 favorites]

Couchsurfers deciding to pick up and move to Air BnB would be like, i dunno, whipping out your wallet after thanksgiving dinner and asking Aunt Ida how much you owe her.

Yea, this.

You don't just let people come in and sleep on your couch. It's more of a hosting/culture thing. The few times we surfed with folks and were en route from one place to another with little time to spare for visiting weren't really ideal for couchsurfing. Had we known we probably would have just dove into our limited budget and gotten a cheap hotel instead of whizzing into and out of someone's place.

I mean all was upfront and known and everything was still groovy but with couchsurfing things really go mo' betta if you have time for at least a meal or two (in their home our at an amazing local joint) and maybe a local *thing*, be it event or attraction or park or party, with the hosting folks. The couch, bed, or floorspace may or may not be comfy or pristine but it was always welcoming and warm.

AirBnB seems to be the exact opposite, more like renting a beach house or, suitably, a bed and breakfast. Not that I've utilized the service but, my impression is that you'd expect nothing more (or less) than clean sheets and perhaps a note from the host with tips and local information.

Would you expect to go out to a Belgian beer bar or to an Ethiopian restaurant with the host at a bed and breakfast? Doing that very thing while couch surfing, however, is sublime.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:11 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

like, i dunno, whipping out your wallet after thanksgiving dinner and asking Aunt Ida how much you owe her.

So you've heard about Gobblr!
posted by escabeche at 8:11 AM on November 18, 2013 [35 favorites]

Empower your members, don’t disparage them. Be transparent and collaborative. As my experience in non-profit social activism has shown me, people want to be part of something big, to have ownership. Couchsurfing was built on that collaboration, and once that was taken away, everything we had built came crumbling down.

Yeah, but you're speaking to the sort of people who just want you to keep spending. It's like the way Bush immediately began squandering the goodwill from 9/11 when he told Americans that the best thing they could do was to go shopping. People wanted to put their shoulders to the wheel, and the response was "we'd rather have a check." Members see community, but Venture Capitalists just see monitization points. The impulses and instincts are so different that they might as well be utterly at odds.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:17 AM on November 18, 2013 [7 favorites]

So you've heard about Gobblr!

This is a great idea. You should have had the thread sign an NDA or non-compete or something because I'm just about to write this up using backbone.js or mustache or Sinatra or whatever the hippest technology is right now.

The way it will work is anyone cooking a meal advertises their menu and number of spots available. People looking to eat browse through listings and purchase available slots.

Add location aware mobile clients, so you can find meals near you on the go, and this shit is like a magic recipe to get acquired. I'll never have to make a dime before I get bought by someone.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:21 AM on November 18, 2013 [11 favorites]

So you've heard about Gobblr!

Follow my recipes with a +yum!
posted by Think_Long at 8:21 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Apparently there's also very little that can't be ruined by sleazy dickheads.

While I agree wholeheartedly that dickheads are often dickheads when and where they can be, the couchsurfers we stayed with, and even went to one CS meeting/party, didn't seem to be phased by this at all. Female hosting was common and we talked with several female surfers and asked about this very thing. They said it hadn't come up.

I'd think this probably stems from the fact that the review/ambassador system provided some protection from sort of thing happening more than once.

Again, that's not to say that it *didn't* happen, but we didn't hear of it in our naive inquires into how this, seemingly wonderful and magic, system worked.

One thing we did hear about was from the person who rescued us from our only bad surfing experience and was very active in the Denver couchsurfing scene. In a nutshell we (2 males) show up at the place where we were setup to surf for two days (with two females). Having vetted things pretty intensely we saw that the person hosting had really good reviews and was even an Ambassador. Cool!

Turns out it was pretty much a bait and switch with weird, creepy setting and rules and pushy encouragement to hangout, eat with them, and donate for our stay (which, as far as I know, is a taboo within the community, the direct asking for funds anyway) because they were obviously unemployed and living on a shoestring themselves.

The system failed because, as we later learned, this person was really active in the community there and pressured people to leave reviews that weren't bad as well as made fake accounts to give good reviews to herself. Not to mention people didn't want to rock the boat by making an ambassador mad.

Anyway, we learned all this from someone, who was also female, that we met at the couchsurfing party at a bar the first night we were in town and we basically befriended enough* to ask "Can you please extricate/save us from this wierd setting? If we can't find a place to stay we're just going to leave and sleep in our car tomorrow or something." And she did, and was an amazing host (see Ethiopian restaurant comment above).

*Is that crazy or what? It was to us. Imagine walking into a bar/party with people you don't know and the vibe being such that you, not to mention the fact that we were two guys can actually vocalize the desire to crash with a solo female with zero notice. And that's ok, accepted, functional, and normal even.

A thousand times, I have no doubt that guys can and are dickheads in situations that involve them hosting a female and I'm not saying my situation (which was kinda-sorta the reverse) washes that away at all. I am saying that my little foray into CS showed no evidence that this sort of thing was a sore-spot at the time/place where we were.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:25 AM on November 18, 2013 [4 favorites]

asking Aunt Ida how much you owe her.

this is exactly the problem, social relationships and money relationships tend to be mutually toxic. witness that the social side of craigslist is increasingly moribund in favor of the buy/sell side.
posted by ennui.bz at 8:26 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

My kids & I used to host & loved it, hosted several people multiple times & only stopped for reasons unrelated to CS. My profile is dormant but I still get regular requests - nearly always from women. A mom, two teens, & a dog is a pretty safe bet. Shame about CS but inevitable.
posted by headnsouth at 8:28 AM on November 18, 2013

and if "crowd funding" ever became ubiquitous it would kill Facebook faster than zuck and his brogrammers can...
posted by ennui.bz at 8:30 AM on November 18, 2013

There's not that much overlap between people who want to share their home with travelers and people who want to rent out rooms/apartments. It's just a completely different motivation.

I know many airbnb hosts who love the "sharing their home with travelers" aspect, fwiw.
posted by wemayfreeze at 8:33 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Hmmm...it seems so weird to me that the site had such a clear ethos to the membership and yet the management completely didn't pick up on it. Is the author really right about what the "typical" couch surfer experience/attitude was like? Or does he have rose-coloured glasses on?
posted by Diablevert at 8:37 AM on November 18, 2013

Yeah, I used to be a frequent Couchsurfer and occasional host. I had mostly very good experiences. Now I am older, wealthier, and slightly more particular, but I still would rather stay in a lived in environment with human beings than in a hotel. So, when I travel, I use AirBNB. I've found that the camaraderie is very similar to that I experienced with CS, but you get your own room. And all the payment happens in advance and over the Internet so it's not awkward. Even less awkward than CS in fact, where you often wonder if you should be doing the dishes or buying a bottle of wine as a thank you.
posted by 256 at 8:38 AM on November 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

where you often wonder if you should be doing the dishes or buying a bottle of wine as a thank you.

IfIeverhostagainandyouvisitmefromanothercountrypleasecookdeliciousfoodfromsaidcountrykthxbai
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:40 AM on November 18, 2013

The way it will work is anyone cooking a meal advertises their menu and number of spots available. People looking to eat browse through listings and purchase available slots.

Add location aware mobile clients, so you can find meals near you on the go, and this shit is like a magic recipe to get acquired. I'll never have to make a dime before I get bought by someone.

Lots to choose from.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 8:49 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

How sad. For the past several years I've been on the road a lot (three relocations and numerous international trips as well) and CS was my savior. I only surfed a handful of times, but I hosted whenever circumstances allowed and was a regular at potlucks, CS events, etc. Having an easy way to meet up and socialize with like-minded folks was great - in the last couple of cities I lived, most of my social group were people I met through hosting or CS meetups.

I haven't been very active on the site in the last year or two (not too long after the site redesign I think) and haven't logged in at all in several months, although a lot of that had to do more with life circumstances than CS itself. Not sure if I'll ever surf again (even if I could, I'm married now and don't think my wife would enjoy it) but I like 256's suggestion of AirBnB, might have to check it out.
posted by photo guy at 8:51 AM on November 18, 2013

I can't decide if I should be charmed by this article's sweet idealism or annoyed at it's naïveté.

Couchsurfing has raised $22.6M in two venture rounds, largely from Benchmark and Omidyar Networks. Big well known Silicon Valley VCs. The moment Couchsurfing took that first round in 2011 this transition was inevitable. The VCs who made that investment saw Couchsurfing as a second Airbnb, a chance to disrupt hotels. There was lip service paid to "not selling out" and the decision to become a B-corp suggests some sincerity (which hasn't worked out in reality). This author is complaining about an inevitability set in motion in 2011. And his claim of ownership because he hung out at some parties and kicked in $50 once is, well, I'll go with charmingly idealist instead of annoyingly naïve.

I'm not saying the VCs are blameless here. If in fact Couchsurfing's numbers are way down, they may well be running their investment right into the ground. But complaining that they turned it into a company is like complaining when an outdoor cat kills a bird.

There are precious few examples of successful Internet companies that have not gone down this VC route. I suppose Metafilter itself is an example, but it's a pretty small concern. Craigslist is probably the best example of a big successful Internet company outside the VC business mold. But I'd argue that the product is greatly hampered by that decision. Wikipedia too, although while the end product is awesome I wouldn't point to the organization as a model of success.

Airbnb started as air mattresses in people's living rooms. It only got upgraded to swanky boutique apartments after the VCs got ahold of it. But you don't hear a lot of air mattress fans complaining about the old Airbnb.
posted by Nelson at 8:59 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

But complaining that they turned it into a company is like complaining when an outdoor cat kills a bird.

Huh? Why isn't it like complaining that someone put the bird outside?
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 9:07 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Fair enough. And I thought I was being too provocative in comparing VCs to predators!
posted by Nelson at 9:12 AM on November 18, 2013

Hah. I guess what I meant was that, people are upset that it was turned into a company, which was not a foregone conclusion, even though the "feel" of the place changing dramatically once it was turned into a company basically was.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 9:16 AM on November 18, 2013

It sounds more like the issue with the site is that it is flooded with inactive or bogus profiles. Like somebody wanted to inflate their numbers to impress VCs and it rendered the site less usuable for the active members.
posted by srboisvert at 9:17 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is a great idea. You should have had the thread sign an NDA or non-compete or something because I'm just about to write this up using backbone.js or mustache or Sinatra or whatever the hippest technology is right now.


You do this style of rant from time to time and I enjoy them, but the key to not sounding like an old man terrified of change is knowing what the hippest technology is and referencing that with confidence and trusting your audience to get the reference. Here's a good one from a year or so ago for reference.
posted by Kwine at 9:18 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

somebody wanted to inflate their numbers to impress VCs and it rendered the site less usuable for the active members.


I bet it was less insidious than that--the engineers were told not to worry about current users and to focus on growing sign-ups with cool new features and redesigns, he said, a trickle of blood running down his chin from where he bit his tongue, and a single tear filled with all the bitterness of the earth dangling from the end of his nose.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:22 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'd love to read more about the time in 2011 when Couchsurfing decided to become a traditionalVC backed company. That'd teach us more than one entitled former user complaining about what happened. I'm particularly curious about the CEO and founder history; Fenton and Hoffer are listed as founders on Wikipedia, Hoffer is listed as the CEO in 2011 when the investment happened, Espinoza is the CEO during the commercial period criticized in the article linked in this post, and Billock is the CEO now. Every single one of those transitions is a story, the real history of the company.

The new book Hatching Twitter is a good read for the kind of drama and shenanigans that happens with VC boards and founders. Different issues and outcome than Couchsurfing, but the general pattern is consistent in almost every VC-backed company I know much about. (The exception being Google; Brin and Page set it up from the beginning to control the board and never, ever have given up that control. It's a key part of why the company is so successful.)
posted by Nelson at 9:24 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

(The exception being Google; Brin and Page set it up from the beginning to control the board and never, ever have given up that control. It's a key part of why the company is so successful.)

But there are a lot of other companies whose founders have held on to power and haven't been as successful. You've got your post hoc all ergo'd up with your propter hoc.
posted by Etrigan at 9:36 AM on November 18, 2013 [6 favorites]

Couchsurfers deciding to pick up and move to Air BnB would be like, i dunno, whipping out your wallet after thanksgiving dinner and asking Aunt Ida how much you owe her.

I use EBAB a lot, and it is only one step up from couchsurfing. Given that you share a bathroom, kitchen, and common space, it is very much like being hosted in a foreign city. I assumed Air BnB operated in the same manner .

The financial aspect gives me a bit more freedom. It means that I get a key, and don't have to wait until my host gets off work. It means that I make my own social plans, and don't feel obligated, or the host doesn't feel obligated, to go out in the evening together. Sometimes it happens, and there are hosts I became friends with. Other times it stays polite and professional.

But for me it was a very natural progression.

Air BnB always seemed one small step up from EBAB ... though I haven't used it, and it does seem like they list more "rooms for rent" from people who don't actually live in the flat.
posted by kanewai at 9:40 AM on November 18, 2013

The site we as members had built, the network we had organized, was suddenly under the control of a CEO who had never before used Couchsurfing, and investors who were interested more in the site’s monetary potential than its power to open minds and break barriers between cultures.

Wait - investors prioritised profits over breaking down cultural barriers? Hold the front page! As Nelson says, how they operated as a VC backed company is a given. Why they chose that route is surely the actual story.

Personally I'm someone who much prefers the like of Airbnb because its cheaper than a hotel or bnb and feels more homely, but still has the distance of a professional-type arrangement. I get why some would like to meet up with new people and eat with them and hang out with them for a while, but for me as a shy person... oh dear God no.
posted by billiebee at 10:19 AM on November 18, 2013

I am a pretty thoroughly introverted person, but I loved the time I spent hosting couchsurfers. I haven't hosted in a while because I found it to be a lot more difficult to do as someone living alone rather than as someone living in a house with other people, but the whole atmosphere of the thing really went a long way towards assuaging the type of anxieties I tend to have in situations like that. AirBnB is fine, but it meets different needs: my sense was always that CS was really only incidentally about finding a place to crash. I've been watching this change in the atmosphere of the site develop over time, and it makes me sad.
posted by invitapriore at 10:49 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Benefit corporation status is regulated, but the extent of the regulation depends on the state. The concept of a B Corp is relatively new and I've never filed one in Delaware, but other states require specific language w/r/t the operation in the incorporation documents that is more specific and stringent than a C or S corporation (but much less stringent than a non-profit.)

Also, based on some cursory Google, DE requires:

At least once every two years, a public benefit corporation must send its stockholders a statement with respect to its promotion of the public benefit(s) identified in its charter, as well as its promotion of the best interests of those materially affected by the corporation’s conduct.

So the corporation can be taken to task -- in what way, I am not entirely sure -- by the shareholders if they feel the corporation is not being operated with the mission in mind.
posted by griphus at 11:31 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

(My day job is corporate filings, IANAL.)
posted by griphus at 11:32 AM on November 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

I had some of my best travel experiences thanks to CS - both surfing and hosting. I found that English-speaking countries like India and the Philippines had hugely active communities and I'm still in touch with now-friends who I met when they hosted me or met up to go exploring in their hometown. Even in cities where I was staying in a hostel/hotel, CS was a beautiful way to avoid the Lonely Planet / guidebook dilemma of "is this restaurant really worth the effort to find and eat at or is it just a random pick that will be impossible to find and thoroughly mediocre." I remember badgering CS folks for eat ups in Manila and Bombay and just being floored by all the deliciousness I had no idea existed.

I aged out of the CS community in the sense that I stopped traveling much at all and haven't logged on in years. Hugely bummed out that CS is withering on the vine, and wonder if some of this is demographics as its most fervent early adopters grow older. 30/40-somethings with stable jobs and more responsibilities will find the chaotic reciprocity of CS less manageable than Airbnb and a straight up transaction. I know I would feel guilty looking for a host now because I would feel like a free rider.
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:36 AM on November 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

photo guy: "How sad. For the past several years I've been on the road a lot (three relocations and numerous international trips as well) and CS was my savior. I only surfed a handful of times, but I hosted whenever circumstances allowed and was a regular at potlucks, CS events, etc. Having an easy way to meet up and socialize with like-minded folks was great - in the last couple of cities I lived, most of my social group were people I met through hosting or CS meetups.

I haven't been very active on the site in the last year or two (not too long after the site redesign I think) and haven't logged in at all in several months, although a lot of that had to do more with life circumstances than CS itself. Not sure if I'll ever surf again (even if I could, I'm married now and don't think my wife would enjoy it) but I like 256's suggestion of AirBnB, might have to check it out."

This was my experience, almost exactly. Surfed/hosted a handful of times, and then wound up using it more for the local community services. Made many life-long friends, but within months of the site redesign, I noticed so many of the usual faces were going missing, and the forums were just flooded with new users asking for a couch (which was against the guideline, you were expressly taught that couch requests were made one-on-one via the PM system). In the past year, I've really only logged in to check for messages from some of the old friends I made through the site. This post really serves as a reminder to me to get my ass in gear and establish a different form of communication with them while I can.
posted by mannequito at 12:33 PM on November 18, 2013

You do this style of rant from time to time and I enjoy them, but the key to not sounding like an old man terrified of change is knowing what the hippest technology is and referencing that with confidence and trusting your audience to get the reference. Here's a good one from a year or so ago for reference.

First I was going to deny it but I really must be old and afraid of change if I keep making the same comment and don't even remember making it.

If anyone else sees me making the same comment from years back but less good let me know.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:47 PM on November 18, 2013

Is being a B Corporation meaningful in practice?

I think the jury is still out on that, the designation is only a few years old. It seems more like a statement of principles than any rigid legal structure. Here's a directory of B Corps. The one that got on my radar was Etsy, I think they genuinely see the B Corp ethos as in line with the company's ideals as well as a way to preserve the culture of their merchants.

Here's Couchsurfing's Certified B Corporation page, complete with a higher-than-median score. Their last report is over two years old though.
posted by Nelson at 12:58 PM on November 18, 2013

The way it will work is anyone cooking a meal advertises their menu and number of spots available

This already exists...
posted by arnicae at 4:17 PM on November 18, 2013

This makes me incredibly sad. I utilized couchsurfing and hospitality club to travel around eastern Europe in 2007. I discovered areas in Estonia, Lithuania, Bosnia, etc that I never would have found in a lonely planet guidebook. I had no idea CS was in such a poor state.
posted by nicolemariecherie at 5:10 PM on November 18, 2013

I am still an active couchsurfer despite the full back-ass-wards stuff happening in the organization. I still host a lot of events and travelers, and participate as a guest and sometimes a traveler myself. I am a selective host and selective surfer, looking to enjoy the experience as best as two random people can when they come together for a couple of days.

True, there are more clueless freeloaders, there are more empty profiles, and there are still problems with the website. There are (usually) guys who host with the wrong motivation or people who will ask you for money in the end, but they are few. Despite these characters, I'm still with it.

Overall the site has made my travel and home life so much more excellent, that I am not yet ready to give up CS and the benefits it brings me. I've moved internationally 3 or 4 times while a member of CS and each time it has served as a basis for my new network. I just came back from Romania with a fantastic group of people I would never have found without CS. There are alternatives (bewelcome was specifically launched in response to the CS changes, iirc), but in many places these alternatives lack the traction necessary to have a strong local community or to surf in less-visited places.

So yeah, the things that have been happening to CS are not positive, but Couchsurfing is still awesome. Don't forget to add it to your social networks on your MeFi profile, or join the MeFi group on CS.

(NB: I am not an ambassador or investor)
posted by whatzit at 9:13 AM on November 19, 2013