Like Craigslist, there's also the "everyone was really cool until someone raped and murdered a client" angle.
Re:Subject: Airbnb
by thedaveoflife on Thursday March 17, 2011 @03:22PM
(#2337599)
Good question but I think they will always have the 'cool' crowd simply because allowing a weary stanger to stay in your apartment is inherently a cool thing to do.
also money talks in this case. As has been brought up elsewhere in this thread, there is a huge market here for unused space that AirBnB is exploiting. Even cool people like saving/making money.
I would be afraid of being the uncool person in this equation :-)
What Airbnb would need to do is allow renters to rate rentees. Two-way system like eBay used to be.
Re:Subject: Airbnb
by brianchesky on Thursday March 17, 2011 @03:37PM
(#2337678)
We do.
Why I think the people on Airbnb are 'cool' is that its a small population that has a lot in common (young or young-at-heart, singles and couples without kids, internet natives, own a macbook, would love to hitchhike Europe while submitting correspond reports for the NYTimes). As it grows, I'm worried that everyone's not going to find everyone else 'cool' on Airbnb.
I wasn't around for the early days of Craigslist, but I imagine it was easy to like people you found on Craigslist because they were probably very similar people to be on Craigslist so early. But now, after scale and popularity, that's gone.
I wonder if Airbnb might lose the 'cool' people edge after scaling.