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A comment on Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends.

Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by JacobAldridge on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @04:40PM (#2534003)
When eBay sold Skype (the first time), a lot of the commentary was along the lines of 'of course they never integrated it - get two people talking and the first thing they will do is agree to sell at a reduced price to avoid the eBay commission'.

So when the OP says "It makes us wonder why the startup didn’t release the feature sooner" my immediate thought is: if I knew a friend of a friend had a spare room available, I'd be communicating through Facebook to arrange it for cheaper (or, if they're good enough friends, free) rather than through Airbnb.

Now, the connection for Airbnb isn't as direct as with eBay - I would need to go through the friend, and that adds time and drama. Maybe the Airbnb team are confident that that extra hassle will outweigh any sly users of the system; or maybe they're just super confident that adding social validation to their potentially risky business [1] will drive customers in droves, so a few sly users really don't matter [2].

[1] Potentially risky in that paying to sleep in someone's spare room (or even a private apartment) is a riskier travel proposition than paying to stay at the Hilton, or even a reputable Hostel.

[2] And, to be fair, they're probably the users you don't want anyway.

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Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by meterplech on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @04:50PM (#2534037)
I hadn't thought of this angle. I will say that when I stay with a friend (early 20s) it's typical to bring beer/food and buy the other person dinner/a meal already. I think some people could circumvent the system- but many will be happy to avoid the etiquette questions and just pay a friend-of-friend.
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Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by andrewcooke on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @04:56PM (#2534055)
this doesn't change much with age :o)
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Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by Estragon on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @05:04PM (#2534075)
It's actually quite easy set up out-of-band communication with someone on AirBnB. I did it the first time I used the service because I didn't really understand how it worked. You only have to express an email address in text which automation can't recognize.
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Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by dpatru on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @06:09PM (#2534273)
As long as the Facebook feature nets AirBnB more than it did without the feature, I don't see how this hurts them. Lots of successful businesses "suffer" from the free rider problem. What percentage of users of Google and Craigslist bring them revenue?
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Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by mrgordon on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @06:16PM (#2534295)
Doesn't every Google user bring Google revenue through advertising..?
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Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by philfreo on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @07:43PM (#2534527)
Not if all the ads a user sees are CPC-based and the user doesn't click. Doesn't matter though, enough people do click...
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Re:Airbnb Taps Facebook, Lets You Crash With Friends Of Friends by ntoshev on Wednesday May 11, 2011 @03:55AM (#2535585)
For a startup at such an early stage it would be a mistake to worry about "cannibalising existing business" - if they don't do it, someone else will. Disruption is all about finding a better economic local minimum. This is what abnb does anyway - more efficient accommodations market.
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