CouchSurfing

The CouchSurfing Project is a free international Internet-based hospitality service. As of June 2006, it had more than 87,000 members in 205 countries. Most of these members were active, with 46% offering their couches to host travellers (with another 27% saying "maybe" and others who are travelling at the moment).

Members use the website, designed by founder Casey Fenton, to coordinate accommodations. It featured extensive profiles, and used a credit card verification system, a personal vouching system, and personal references to increase security and trust. There were many other features on the site, such as interest discussion groups, meeting functionality, live chat and more.

In June 2006 the project experienced a number of computer problems resulting in much of the database being lost. It was initially announced that the project was being ended; however, within days it was confirmed that the site would be rebuilt, and users were again able to login (but not yet access the site's full functions). "CouchSurfing 2.0" was announced on 3 July 2006, planned to be operational within 10 days.^*. As of July 7th 2006 Couchsurfing.com is once again fully operational although some, mostly inactive profiles, group postings and personal messages seem to have been lost.

Organization

The mission statement of CouchSurfing is to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding.

In 1999 Casey Fenton registered couchsurfing.com with the intention to create CouchSurfing. The website was designed by and registered to Casey Fenton Consulting. In 2003 the non-profit company CouchSurfing International, Inc. was created by Casey Fenton, who was CEO and member of the board. The other three founders of CouchSurfing comprised the rest of the board.

CouchSurfing.org points to the same website as CouchSurfing.com, though there are some websites trying to use CouchSurfing's fame, such as couchsurfing.net and the German couchsurfing.de.

How it works

Membership in the organization is free and is obtained simply by registering on the website. The core activity of the organization is exchange of accommodation. Acting as a host, a member offers the possibility of accommodation at his or her leisure; it is not required, but obviously it is encouraged. Acting as a surfer (guest), a traveller may search for and request accommodation at his or her destination. Accommodation is entirely consensual between the host and surfer, and the duration, nature, and terms of the surfer's stay are generally worked out in advance to the convenience of both parties. It is also expected to be free; no monetary exchange takes place except under certain circumstances (e.g. the surfer may compensate the host for food).

There are three methods to ensure security and trust, which are all visible on member profiles for potential hosts and surfers to see prior to arranging anything with each other:

Personal references, which hosts and surfers could leave for each other at their option after having used the service.
A credit card verification system, which allowed members to "lock in" their name and address by making a credit card payment and entering a code that CouchSurfing mails to the billing address (this also allows CS to recuperate some costs by requiring a small donation for verification).
A personal vouching system, whereby a member that had been vouched for — originally starting with the founders of the site — might in turn vouch for any number of other members he or she knew or had met through CouchSurfing, and trusts.

Volunteers within the club often arrange meetings or camps which are events that last several days and bring people together.

Members who wish to volunteer for various tasks on the site and help spread the word about CouchSurfing in general may become ambassadors. Ambassadors must be verified and actively promote the CouchSurfing spirit among members and to the public. In addition to promoting use of the site, they greet new members, help with questions and other administrative tasks, and more, all on a volunteer basis.

Criticisms

There are occasionally members of CouchSurfing who attempt to use the site as if it were a dating service, a problem that the founder Casey acknowledges: "Based on what I've seen and heard, these people who come into CS and use it exclusively like a dating site are definitely harming the overall CS experience." This is a problem common to many large online communities with personal profiles. The other side of this argument is that limiting members' use of the site may be construed as censorship, an undesirable element for a free and open community such as CouchSurfing.

CouchSurfing's team of ambassadors had an active and open dialogue about how best to curtail such behavior without unduly censoring the use of the site, and at the time of the site's death they had been successful at keeping the site largely true to its purpose.

Temporary failure of the project

The CouchSurfing project was taken down temporarily due to a major database error on June 30, 2006.

An email sent by the founder, Casey Fenton to members of the project reported that a fatal database error had occurred - too much important data was lost to allow the project to continue in its current form.The email is reproduced in full at CouchSurfing Deletes Itself, Shuts Down on TechCrunch.

However, many members protested, offering assistance and donations, and within days it was confirmed that the site would be rebuilt. "CouchSurfing 2.0" was announced on 3 July 2006, planned to be operational within 10 days.^* At this time users are again able to login, but cannot yet access their profiles or contact other users.

Immediately following the announcement of June 30, some websites started up in response, promoting attempts to help rebuild CouchSurfing; some sites request users to enter their CouchSurfing.com details. However, such sites are not officially endorsed, and members have been warned against giving their personal details to other sites.e.g. at the CouchSurfing forum Discussion pages have also appeared, including instructions on how to recover profiles from Google's cache, so that it can be re-entered easily if and when the web site comes back up.PROPER cached profile recovery: important for retrieving all your friends! - includes special instructions for members with more than 10 "friends," a method for finding the full list of friends. Since Google's cache feature can re-write itself unpredictably, users who wish to save their profile may wish to act immediately on these instructions.

As of July 7 the website was up again. Many of the profiles could be recovered. The temporary forum put up after the crash is still online, though not linked to from the main site.

References

External links