Couchsurfing really went to shit towards the end (2020 when they went from "we will always keep our core service free" to locking you out of your account unless you paid them overnight without any warning)
I think reviews criticizing aesthetic choices or even cleanliness would tend to be taken with a grain of salt, but also I hosted people (and couchsurfed) from 2005-2020 and managed to avoid bad reviews, so perhaps if I personally had received a slew of silly bad reviews over silly things like that I would have abandoned it earlier.
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.
This is just hospitality reviews 101. I run a couple of Airbnbs in the uk - 99.9% of guests leave gushing reviews, 0.01% break open locked cupboards and are like “There was a cupboard FULL of cleaning supplies! Disgusting! 1/5!”.
I’ve even had people bring a plastic rat with them and pose it around the apartment to then complain to customer service - successfully. That one cost me about £5,000 in a refund, lost revenue as I was made to cancel bookings until I had a pest controller in, and a mystified but still expensive pest controller.
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.
Scam plan: know someone in Airbnb customer satisfaction team > rent expensive Airbnb accommodation > make bogus complaint complete with faked pictures to support bogus claim > have the claim approved by acquaintance > share profit.
The “profit” you would be sharing with the person in Airbnb customer satisfaction in your hypothetical scam is a refund of your money which you would have paid to rent the place. This is like Homer Simpson’s grease business.
Reviews in these kind of sites should always be moderated before it reaches the hosts, if not by a moderation team (due lack of fund) then at least other users, e.g. 2 out of 3 other hosts that mark the review as helpful and within the spirit of the website.
I'm one of the Couchers founders and wrote this blog post (and incidentally spend way too much time on HN), awesome to see this show up here!
This launch is the culmination of a huge push from our volunteer team to clean up a bunch of core features and make the platform easier to use. We are also launching a new branding strategy and new landing page.
Quick plug: we are looking for senior React Native devs to join us and help us get a mobile app out, as well as React/Python devs for frontend/backend. Everything we do is open source (under MIT): https://github.com/Couchers-org/couchers/
Highly recommend integrating with the atproto network to hop onto its social graph; that could be a major differentiator for your service. I’d love to log in with my Bluesky account and see who else in my network has opted to share their couchsurfing status.
Alternatives to Couchsurfing.com such as BeWelcome and WarmShowers have been around for many years, decades even and have users counts into 6 figures. They've remained non-corporate but never managed to reach mainstream popularity like Couchsurfing.com did.
What are you hoping to achieve by launching another hospitality sharing site that the other established non-profit sites couldn't?
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.
so couchers focus on better UI and new tech? why not join efforts with bewellcome? or are they too "democratic" and not everyone sees new tech and better UI as major improvement?
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
I haven't used Couchers, but I was once very active with the Couchsurfing community in a couple cities. Here's what made Couchsurfing once a vibrant, thriving community:
- Forums. Regular-old stupid 1990's CGI web forums. They are the perfect way to grow organic community on the web. Simple, functional, compact, reliable. They don't bury content in endless scroll, they organize discussion by topics, pinned messages help drive central/ongoing discussions, and local moderators keep things in order. Couchsurfing began a steep nose-dive when the redesign de-emphasized forums.
- Regular local group meet-ups. There were plenty of people who hosted and surfed who never went to one of these; but for many, this was their first introduction to the community, and their first "profile reviews" that gave them social credit/standing. For others, the meetups were all they ever did... not really the point of the site, but it was a symbiotic relationship. Without regular in-person meet-ups, the community is too decentralized, and moderation suffers. Once regular meetups died, and the other "features" of Couchsurfing emerged, it became a weird hookup app, which you could see not only in "chat", but also in profiles and reviews. The social pressure and moderation of local meetups created a culture and reinforced its values. (also: depends 100% on forums)
- Reviews. Love 'em or hate 'em, you live and die in the community by your reviews. I feel like we should have public, irrevocable reviews for all kinds of things now. And bad reviews aren't necessarily a death sentence, but they are the meat and potatoes of the site, so they really have to work well. Looks like Couchers is still improving them, which is good.
- Weirdness. Part of the allure of Couchsurfing was the unexpected. People would tailor their profiles in all sorts of ways; long lists of rules, unique formatting, almost like an old MySpace page. Maybe you'd stay with a Mormon, or a Naturist, or at the last art-punk squat in Berlin. This creates safety issues, uncomfortable situations. But it also challenges people to deal with the real world (when they elect to).
I see Couchers has banned some of these last types of interactions (nudism & shared space). Regardless of what you think about this, every such restriction will shrink the human experience surfing used to provide. You can still have a restrictive hospitality site, but it's unlikely to be as successful. I think it would work if dedicated to one thing, like tourism, or rock climbing. But if you want it to be general, it's gotta be messy.
Wow, thanks for the warning that Couchers bans naturists. I am aware of many unique and beautiful experiences by naturists hosts. It’s disappointing that Couchers would want to eliminate them.
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.
Very fond memories of couchsurfing met very nice people both as a traveler and a host. But this was long ago. Not sure this will ever work again though
Hosted loads for a while, a brilliant time. We were living somewhere unusual at the time, everyone that came through was interesting, intelligent and fun. Zero bad experiences. Made some friends for life.
My flatmate at the time ended up marrying a couchsurfer we'd hosted, after reconnecting many years later.
We all got sulky and huffy when they started charging and stopped engaging, but the sad thing is we just got too busy. Couchsurfing was like hosting a party constantly, and as work picked up I found it harder to engage.
Still seems to be a community there. I found myself in Split a while ago and stumbled upon a meetup, had a great evening unexpectedly.
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.
After CS went downhill, I created accounts at most of the alternatives around. I just leave it there, offering our living room.
I'm not living in a very touristic area, but every other month, I get a request for a night and if it fit's in my schedule, I'll accept. It's been only nice experiences so far and no one gave me the vibe of seeing it as a cheap alternative to hotels only. Most people ask on bewelcome.org by the way.
I just like that even though I stay in my bubble most of the time, I get the opportunity to spend some quality time with a stranger. Especially because those strangers are often on some kind of a mission, else they typically wouldn't come to my area.
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).
It probably also belonged to a certain period of time and a certain generation. The peak of couchsurfing coincided with millennials coming of age, and provided something that appealed to them at the time. Namely, cheap travel and interesting, random experiences to brag about.
That demographic is a lot older now, and the younger generation has other interests and expectations which couchsurfing likely does not appeal to.
The Internet changed the nature of tourism quite a bit as well. You have to remember most people used to use services like travel agents or tours to organize things for them. Anyone who went off the beaten path and was interested in experiencing another place by sleeping on a stranger’s couch was probably someone interesting.
Now everyone is used to using the internet to organize their travel and get the best deals on anything they can - and so websites like couchsurfing become a free booking.com alternative for people who have no interest in the human experience side of it.
The Summer after graduating high school is sometimes used to travel, taking extended backpacking trips or other. Couching could be a big hit for this demographic that takes a cultural immersion.
I see 900+ Couchers registered among a few of the New York City boroughs. My impression is that this means someone can live in NYC for an entire Summer, couch-surfing the big city and establishing a real connection with at least 60 hosts. That would be quite an experience, with many stories to share.
>, couch-surfing the big city and establishing a real connection with at least 60 hosts. That would be quite an experience, with many stories to share.
Nice I was loving Couchsurfing until they started aggressively monetising it. Had really great experiences with hosting people! Hope Couchers will revive the great experience of hosting people
Couchsurfing isn't aggressively monetized. They've got a very very small annual fee, and once you pay it they never harass you for money. It's far less monetized than other mainstream apps.
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.
It looks completely different and is a non-profit:
> Couchers, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization ... [incorporated] in the United States in late 2021, and the project was moved under the purview of this new non-profit in early 2022.
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.
I happen to have an account with them, and also BeWelcome (what seems to be the closest to popular alternative to the original couchsurfing.org) and TrustRoots, too. Also, the original one, of course.
Oh hey, volunteer dev at Couchers.org here. How cool to see this pop up on Hacker News!
For the n00bs: I think the best way to explain the concept of couch surfing is to imagine visiting a friend in another city — they show you around, you have a great time, and you crash on their couch, or guest room or whatever. With Couchers, it’s just like that — except you’re meeting that friend for the first time (via Couchers).
Volunteer dev for Couchers here. We're actually a totally separate website from Couchsurfing. Different team, different tech stack, though we hope to keep the original vibe of CS alive! You can find us at couchers.org.
If anybody is interested in beta app testing, I’m happy to invite you to the BeWelcome.org iOS app!
Currently it’s just a PWA, but we’re trying to keep it simple so it can get onto the App Store.
I was a big fan of CouchSurfing before they started charging a monthly fee, which is a similar gripe I have with Servas. I met my girlfriend at the CS meet up in Kaohsiung, and although I’m no longer able to help, BeWelcome has several ways to volunteer.
And you can't manage to do that, then your logo link should go to your product, not back to the blog.
I gave this TWO attempts to find out =what the product is - that's the biggest opportunity most startups will get - and this company failed twice to tell me conveniently what it is and I am not trying a third time.
Completely agree. It took me much longer than I wanted to figure out what the hell Couchers is. Be direct and to the point with the language you use above the fold (on the home page...not the blog post).
I don't think so: it just takes thoughtful moderation, setting clear rules, and then enforcing them. When you make it socially unacceptable on the platform, people do a good job reporting inappropriate behavior.
I think the reason that CouchSurfing.com turned into a low-key hookup app is that it was actually a profitable strat for them. They used to monetize verification (something like $60 per verification), and my hypothesis is that a large proportion of people who ever verified paid for verification soon after signing up. By being a hookup site, it actually increased the perceived value to a certain subset of people signing up, which increased signups, verification numbers, and revenue. Of course this made the experience worse on the platform itself once people tried to use it, but they could milk that "easy way to hook up" concept for a long time (basically until the pandemic killed it).
Michael Sandel’s book had a good section on Airbnb killing couch surfing. Maybe the one thing Airbnb really did do.
Another POV is, everyone is fatigued out of selling to customers who cannot afford to pay more. In this space: Trusted House Sitters is like having a homeless person stay over. Couchsurfing: is it similar?
IMO AirBnb and Couchsurfing have to entirely different aims.
AirBnB is about the space itself. You pay for the space.
Couchsurfing is about the people sharing the space with you, cultural-exchange, etc. You do not pay, it's more about connecting and meeting with people.
Ya in some cases Airbnb can be like Couchsurfing if the host is there in the same apartment/house and actually more of a host/local guide, and I think some Couchsurfing hosts may have transitioned to Airbnb, but there's definitely a difference in what the "default" expectation is
We've been hosting both AirBnB and Couchers/CouchSurfing.
AirBnB has the vibe that you as the host are a provider of a service, which will be rated by the "customer". Couchsurfing is just some people hanging out.
> Lots of issues like this due to an overly dynamic site.
Rarely are UX issues there because of anything technical at all, just poor testing and poor polishing. Of course, things are way easier with a static site, since the back button Just Works(TM) in that case, but doesn't mean "overly dynamic sites" cannot have proper browser history.
The "trendy stack" comment seems misplaced. CS is famously written in Ruby on Rails, not PHP, perhaps one of the most "trendy" stacks at the time[0]. Coincidentally, CS is also awfully slow with frequent errors. Managing all my guests when my city was in high season was usually much easier to do via WhatsApp.
To be honest, as a top host in my city, the only features that Couchsurfing was actually good for was discovery. Everything else was kinda broken or slow. It added to the charm, but it definitely wasn't much better than what you're claiming here for Couchers.
I hosted couchsurfers and it was fun, but i stopped when i started getting detailed reviews about random shit about my home after people left.
Letting people live in your house in the central business district of a top tier city and then having them comment on your towel designs.
It’s not a hotel. I’m so over it.
Couchsurfing really went to shit towards the end (2020 when they went from "we will always keep our core service free" to locking you out of your account unless you paid them overnight without any warning)
I think reviews criticizing aesthetic choices or even cleanliness would tend to be taken with a grain of salt, but also I hosted people (and couchsurfed) from 2005-2020 and managed to avoid bad reviews, so perhaps if I personally had received a slew of silly bad reviews over silly things like that I would have abandoned it earlier.
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.
Can we please see a photo of the towel(s) I'm too invested in this now.
That's some weird shit. I'd never couch surf without my own towel.
Sharing towels is a great way to feel better about not being the only one with a fungal infection.
This is just hospitality reviews 101. I run a couple of Airbnbs in the uk - 99.9% of guests leave gushing reviews, 0.01% break open locked cupboards and are like “There was a cupboard FULL of cleaning supplies! Disgusting! 1/5!”.
I’ve even had people bring a plastic rat with them and pose it around the apartment to then complain to customer service - successfully. That one cost me about £5,000 in a refund, lost revenue as I was made to cancel bookings until I had a pest controller in, and a mystified but still expensive pest controller.
Pareto’s law is pareto’s law.
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.
Scam plan: know someone in Airbnb customer satisfaction team > rent expensive Airbnb accommodation > make bogus complaint complete with faked pictures to support bogus claim > have the claim approved by acquaintance > share profit.
The “profit” you would be sharing with the person in Airbnb customer satisfaction in your hypothetical scam is a refund of your money which you would have paid to rent the place. This is like Homer Simpson’s grease business.
"He has the ugliest towels I have ever seen! I still have nightmares about them! 1 star!"
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.
I’ve only had boring towels in the entirety of my life and i’m suddenly curious about what your towels look like.
That's hilarious I am sorry lol
[dead]
Reviews in these kind of sites should always be moderated before it reaches the hosts, if not by a moderation team (due lack of fund) then at least other users, e.g. 2 out of 3 other hosts that mark the review as helpful and within the spirit of the website.
In this scenario hosting couch surfers also puts you on the hook as a moderator? I’ll pass.
As much as stackoverflow puts you on the hook as a moderator.
I'm one of the Couchers founders and wrote this blog post (and incidentally spend way too much time on HN), awesome to see this show up here!
This launch is the culmination of a huge push from our volunteer team to clean up a bunch of core features and make the platform easier to use. We are also launching a new branding strategy and new landing page.
Quick plug: we are looking for senior React Native devs to join us and help us get a mobile app out, as well as React/Python devs for frontend/backend. Everything we do is open source (under MIT): https://github.com/Couchers-org/couchers/
Happy to answer any questions folks might have!
Highly recommend integrating with the atproto network to hop onto its social graph; that could be a major differentiator for your service. I’d love to log in with my Bluesky account and see who else in my network has opted to share their couchsurfing status.
(I put up a GitHub issue)
Alternatives to Couchsurfing.com such as BeWelcome and WarmShowers have been around for many years, decades even and have users counts into 6 figures. They've remained non-corporate but never managed to reach mainstream popularity like Couchsurfing.com did.
What are you hoping to achieve by launching another hospitality sharing site that the other established non-profit sites couldn't?
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.
so couchers focus on better UI and new tech? why not join efforts with bewellcome? or are they too "democratic" and not everyone sees new tech and better UI as major improvement?
curious where this new road will lead surfers.
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
I haven't used Couchers, but I was once very active with the Couchsurfing community in a couple cities. Here's what made Couchsurfing once a vibrant, thriving community:
- Forums. Regular-old stupid 1990's CGI web forums. They are the perfect way to grow organic community on the web. Simple, functional, compact, reliable. They don't bury content in endless scroll, they organize discussion by topics, pinned messages help drive central/ongoing discussions, and local moderators keep things in order. Couchsurfing began a steep nose-dive when the redesign de-emphasized forums.
- Regular local group meet-ups. There were plenty of people who hosted and surfed who never went to one of these; but for many, this was their first introduction to the community, and their first "profile reviews" that gave them social credit/standing. For others, the meetups were all they ever did... not really the point of the site, but it was a symbiotic relationship. Without regular in-person meet-ups, the community is too decentralized, and moderation suffers. Once regular meetups died, and the other "features" of Couchsurfing emerged, it became a weird hookup app, which you could see not only in "chat", but also in profiles and reviews. The social pressure and moderation of local meetups created a culture and reinforced its values. (also: depends 100% on forums)
- Reviews. Love 'em or hate 'em, you live and die in the community by your reviews. I feel like we should have public, irrevocable reviews for all kinds of things now. And bad reviews aren't necessarily a death sentence, but they are the meat and potatoes of the site, so they really have to work well. Looks like Couchers is still improving them, which is good.
- Weirdness. Part of the allure of Couchsurfing was the unexpected. People would tailor their profiles in all sorts of ways; long lists of rules, unique formatting, almost like an old MySpace page. Maybe you'd stay with a Mormon, or a Naturist, or at the last art-punk squat in Berlin. This creates safety issues, uncomfortable situations. But it also challenges people to deal with the real world (when they elect to).
I see Couchers has banned some of these last types of interactions (nudism & shared space). Regardless of what you think about this, every such restriction will shrink the human experience surfing used to provide. You can still have a restrictive hospitality site, but it's unlikely to be as successful. I think it would work if dedicated to one thing, like tourism, or rock climbing. But if you want it to be general, it's gotta be messy.
Wow, thanks for the warning that Couchers bans naturists. I am aware of many unique and beautiful experiences by naturists hosts. It’s disappointing that Couchers would want to eliminate them.
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.
Very fond memories of couchsurfing met very nice people both as a traveler and a host. But this was long ago. Not sure this will ever work again though
Hosted loads for a while, a brilliant time. We were living somewhere unusual at the time, everyone that came through was interesting, intelligent and fun. Zero bad experiences. Made some friends for life.
My flatmate at the time ended up marrying a couchsurfer we'd hosted, after reconnecting many years later.
We all got sulky and huffy when they started charging and stopped engaging, but the sad thing is we just got too busy. Couchsurfing was like hosting a party constantly, and as work picked up I found it harder to engage.
Still seems to be a community there. I found myself in Split a while ago and stumbled upon a meetup, had a great evening unexpectedly.
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.
After CS went downhill, I created accounts at most of the alternatives around. I just leave it there, offering our living room.
I'm not living in a very touristic area, but every other month, I get a request for a night and if it fit's in my schedule, I'll accept. It's been only nice experiences so far and no one gave me the vibe of seeing it as a cheap alternative to hotels only. Most people ask on bewelcome.org by the way.
I just like that even though I stay in my bubble most of the time, I get the opportunity to spend some quality time with a stranger. Especially because those strangers are often on some kind of a mission, else they typically wouldn't come to my area.
CouchSurfing still has a very active community. I'm hosting these days and get multiple requests every week.
What's changed? Did you get older?
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).
It probably also belonged to a certain period of time and a certain generation. The peak of couchsurfing coincided with millennials coming of age, and provided something that appealed to them at the time. Namely, cheap travel and interesting, random experiences to brag about.
That demographic is a lot older now, and the younger generation has other interests and expectations which couchsurfing likely does not appeal to.
The Internet changed the nature of tourism quite a bit as well. You have to remember most people used to use services like travel agents or tours to organize things for them. Anyone who went off the beaten path and was interested in experiencing another place by sleeping on a stranger’s couch was probably someone interesting.
Now everyone is used to using the internet to organize their travel and get the best deals on anything they can - and so websites like couchsurfing become a free booking.com alternative for people who have no interest in the human experience side of it.
The Summer after graduating high school is sometimes used to travel, taking extended backpacking trips or other. Couching could be a big hit for this demographic that takes a cultural immersion.
I see 900+ Couchers registered among a few of the New York City boroughs. My impression is that this means someone can live in NYC for an entire Summer, couch-surfing the big city and establishing a real connection with at least 60 hosts. That would be quite an experience, with many stories to share.
>, couch-surfing the big city and establishing a real connection with at least 60 hosts. That would be quite an experience, with many stories to share.
Sounds like my idea of Hell, but i'm introverted.
Top locations have way more people interested in couchsurfing than there are people hosting, so probably not feasible.
I am a couchers host in NYC and don't actually get too many requests! I host someone about once or twice a month.
How’s your towel design?
Nice I was loving Couchsurfing until they started aggressively monetising it. Had really great experiences with hosting people! Hope Couchers will revive the great experience of hosting people
Every month I get an email from Paypal that I automatically paid 1,99 euros to Couchsurfing. I love that email!
Had some great experiences with CS and I'm happy to pay them for these couple of times a year I host somebody.
Couchsurfing isn't aggressively monetized. They've got a very very small annual fee, and once you pay it they never harass you for money. It's far less monetized than other mainstream apps.
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.
Is this some sort of database, of couches? A couch base, if you will?
But not to be mistaken for couchDB
Wait, is this a rebrand of couchsurfing.org?
It looks completely different and is a non-profit:
> Couchers, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization ... [incorporated] in the United States in late 2021, and the project was moved under the purview of this new non-profit in early 2022.
-- https://couchers.org/foundation
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...
Volunteer dev for Couchers here, crazy seeing this pop up here!
Anyway to answer the question, we are totally separate from Couchsurfing.org!
We created Couchers in 2020 after Couchsurfing put up a pay wall, after going for-profit and going downhill for awhile.
We want to keep the original Couchsurfing spirit alive, so we started Couchers.org.
https://couchers.org/issues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#Change_to_a_for-p...
This is the phoenix rising from the enshittification, as is tradition.
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.
Another project.
I happen to have an account with them, and also BeWelcome (what seems to be the closest to popular alternative to the original couchsurfing.org) and TrustRoots, too. Also, the original one, of course.
Oh hey, volunteer dev at Couchers.org here. How cool to see this pop up on Hacker News!
For the n00bs: I think the best way to explain the concept of couch surfing is to imagine visiting a friend in another city — they show you around, you have a great time, and you crash on their couch, or guest room or whatever. With Couchers, it’s just like that — except you’re meeting that friend for the first time (via Couchers).
Anyway come join us we're fun lol.
Have in mind that this project is not https://www.couchsurfing.com
Oh, so couchsurfing is still up. I assumed this was a spiritual successor.
In 2008, I met my ex wife on CS.. those were good times before they went corp later. Also had many fun trips through EU with it. Glad to see it back!
Volunteer dev for Couchers here. We're actually a totally separate website from Couchsurfing. Different team, different tech stack, though we hope to keep the original vibe of CS alive! You can find us at couchers.org.
Is this not established as couch surfing? Is that a (tm) thing now, so you cant use the term? It is intuitive and well established.
I don't think they've applied for a trademark?
But what is it?
If anybody is interested in beta app testing, I’m happy to invite you to the BeWelcome.org iOS app!
Currently it’s just a PWA, but we’re trying to keep it simple so it can get onto the App Store.
I was a big fan of CouchSurfing before they started charging a monthly fee, which is a similar gripe I have with Servas. I met my girlfriend at the CS meet up in Kaohsiung, and although I’m no longer able to help, BeWelcome has several ways to volunteer.
Note to all founders:
Tell the reader what your product is - first.
And you can't manage to do that, then your logo link should go to your product, not back to the blog.
I gave this TWO attempts to find out =what the product is - that's the biggest opportunity most startups will get - and this company failed twice to tell me conveniently what it is and I am not trying a third time.
Completely agree. It took me much longer than I wanted to figure out what the hell Couchers is. Be direct and to the point with the language you use above the fold (on the home page...not the blog post).
Did they change it in the last hour? The logo sends me to the homepage, not the blog.
I don't think the blog post was written for Hacker News.
It's in bold in the 3rd paragraph, but that requires you to know what couch surfing is in the first place.
Are Couchsurfing type apps inevitably doomed to just becoming low-key hookup apps?
Couchers founder and wrote the article.
I don't think so: it just takes thoughtful moderation, setting clear rules, and then enforcing them. When you make it socially unacceptable on the platform, people do a good job reporting inappropriate behavior.
I think the reason that CouchSurfing.com turned into a low-key hookup app is that it was actually a profitable strat for them. They used to monetize verification (something like $60 per verification), and my hypothesis is that a large proportion of people who ever verified paid for verification soon after signing up. By being a hookup site, it actually increased the perceived value to a certain subset of people signing up, which increased signups, verification numbers, and revenue. Of course this made the experience worse on the platform itself once people tried to use it, but they could milk that "easy way to hook up" concept for a long time (basically until the pandemic killed it).
Michael Sandel’s book had a good section on Airbnb killing couch surfing. Maybe the one thing Airbnb really did do.
Another POV is, everyone is fatigued out of selling to customers who cannot afford to pay more. In this space: Trusted House Sitters is like having a homeless person stay over. Couchsurfing: is it similar?
IMO AirBnb and Couchsurfing have to entirely different aims.
AirBnB is about the space itself. You pay for the space.
Couchsurfing is about the people sharing the space with you, cultural-exchange, etc. You do not pay, it's more about connecting and meeting with people.
Ya in some cases Airbnb can be like Couchsurfing if the host is there in the same apartment/house and actually more of a host/local guide, and I think some Couchsurfing hosts may have transitioned to Airbnb, but there's definitely a difference in what the "default" expectation is
We've been hosting both AirBnB and Couchers/CouchSurfing.
AirBnB has the vibe that you as the host are a provider of a service, which will be rated by the "customer". Couchsurfing is just some people hanging out.
I met my ex wife in CS.. those were good times before they went corp
Oh, how I disagree with the pitch. Give me transactions, baby! I'll build my own connections. Money talks!
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I seriously doubt their website failed because they used django and react, that's gotta be the most common tech stack of all time.
> Lots of issues like this due to an overly dynamic site.
Rarely are UX issues there because of anything technical at all, just poor testing and poor polishing. Of course, things are way easier with a static site, since the back button Just Works(TM) in that case, but doesn't mean "overly dynamic sites" cannot have proper browser history.
> Rarely are UX issues there because of anything technical at all, just poor testing and poor polishing.
Honestly, I think bad taste in UX has a lot to do with it too.
The "trendy stack" comment seems misplaced. CS is famously written in Ruby on Rails, not PHP, perhaps one of the most "trendy" stacks at the time[0]. Coincidentally, CS is also awfully slow with frequent errors. Managing all my guests when my city was in high season was usually much easier to do via WhatsApp.
To be honest, as a top host in my city, the only features that Couchsurfing was actually good for was discovery. Everything else was kinda broken or slow. It added to the charm, but it definitely wasn't much better than what you're claiming here for Couchers.
[0] - https://about.couchsurfing.com/about/jobs/rails.html
Calling python and Django trendy in 2025 seems a bit misplaced. Maybe 15 years ago they were.
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