Couchers is officially out of beta

Yeah, I really doubt any one turned down the opportunity, because of the criticism. It was just one review mentioned it and the next review disputed it. It just became a train of reviews. I just became annoyed by it and it made me wonder why I was bothering.

Interesting.

I had the impression it slowly transformed itself to a hook-up community and that attracted a different crowd than intended.

Sharing towels is a great way to feel better about not being the only one with a fungal infection.

I think the difference between Airbnbs and couchsurfers is huge. Couch surfing is a voluntary yet free service provided by someone out of the goodwill of their heart. Airbnb is provided for profit. Leaving such reviews is fine for an Airbnb (assuming it's deserved ofc), but certainly not okay for couch surfing.

It does depend what they've reviewed though. Is the person hosting living in a in a gross apartment vs the towel designs are not nice.

But then the next one is like… “The towels ARE ugly but it’s worth it for the location," you can’t make this sh*t up.

In this scenario hosting couch surfers also puts you on the hook as a moderator? I’ll pass.

Couchers Frontend Team Lead here. Aapeli is out for the night so I'm popping in to answer from my POV.

I think the main difference is that we're trying to capture the spirit of what CouchSurfing.com used to be: modern, easy to use, welcoming to newbies and centered on genuine social connection. But we also want to go beyond that. Build for today’s world—with better safety tools, better moderation, and more community-driven features that help people find each other easier.

Couchsurfing was initially about free hospitality and cultural exchange but is now largely driven by monetization. They also haven't really provided many new features to users since going for-profit.

BeWelcome is another alternative that came out of the CouchSurfing community years ago. It has a more ideological focus around democratic decision-making and they are not as newbie friendly, have an older UI, and are a bit slower to adopt new tech.

WarmShowers on the other hand is for a completely different crowd: it's for bike tourers that leave at the crack of dawn and arrive at sunset. They need a shower (hence the name), a place to put their bike, and a bed to sleep on. They'll probably be a bit too tired to socialize. That's very different from the traditional couch surfing platforms where socialization is the focus.

I guess their advantage is they have Couch in the name? Joking but I'm curious what the answer is here, I think everyone that remembers the Couchsurfing glory days is hoping that they or someone succeeds in bringing them back

Self censorship resulting from pressures from the likes of Visa, MasterCard, Google Play and Apple's App store when the law doesn't forbid it. This is the problem when the world is run by monopolies. Laws don't mean anything, companies effectively make them.

Same. I hosted do many people. Super interesting, sometimes weird. I have soo many good memories and I still gave many Of them as my friend.

Unfortunately the whole platform changed a few years ago.

Very low quality requests, hosts had to paid, bad support, and bad filtering.

It’s too bad, bc it left a sour taste at the end. Many people would chat in English, but in reality they can’t speak nor write English. Also, the last few years pale just use it as a cheap hotel. No interaction and sometimes plain rude behavior. I even had to kick someone out.

I lived in a house where one of my housemates was also into couchsurfing and for a few month in summer and early autumn 2008, we were very active hosts. One weekend while there was a CS event on in my city, we hosted 12 people at once.

In 2009, I was living somewhere I couldn’t host, but my primary social group for that year was other local couchsurfers — we used to meet up twice a week. One of them got married to one of my friends. Others I kept in touch with for many years.

I haven’t been part of it in a long time, but I haven’t many fond memories of the couchsurfing community. Like you, I didn’t have any bad experiences.

Never hosted or surfed, but joined the meetups in a couple of different cities when traveling, and it was great every time. (This was 2013) Seems like it just had a nice group of people.

I wonder how much of it is down to the internet changing - similar to the eternal september, or overtourism.

Couchsurfing used to be a relatively niche thing which allowed it to work and thrive. The percentage of freeloaders or bad actors was low enough not to be a problem.

But now with more people being aware of it/its alternatives, the percentage of bad actors would increase too (and maybe not even proportionally to the number of good actors).

I am a couchers host in NYC and don't actually get too many requests! I host someone about once or twice a month.

Making it impossible for me to even see my own profile or message with people I previously hosted is exactly what I call "aggressive". It's not about the cost, it's about what exactly is being restricted. They literally took content that I created (MY profile) and are asking me to pay for it. A sane monetising approach would be to charge for sending new requests, for example.

Couchers has the same color "theme" that Couchsurfing had in ~2010.

Couchsurfing started as a 501c3:

https://blog.couchsurfing.com/a-letter-from-co-founder-casey...

yeah, that's about the time I quit couchsurfing and limited my interactions to community meets. Then it pretty much died out. I couldn't tell if this is the same folks trying to do it right or different folks who believed in the original mission of CouchSurfing.