CouchSurfing
The news of CouchSurfings rapid and somewhat strange demise is filtering through the blogosphere as I type. I fugured that it was only right for me to add my own contribution to the discussion.
Firstly, and most importantly, this is indeed a tradgedy. Forgeting everything that lies between, the loss of CouchSurfing is both a loss to the WWW as it provided such a useful and honest service and a loss to it's community, many of who had found lasting friendships and shared amazing experiences with it's users.
That said there are a number of interesting debates that lie within this saga, all of which warrent discussion.
Reading TechCrunch a number of comments were placing a portion of the blame squarely at the CouchSurfing management, who in their eyes, had failed to successfully backup their databases off site, which would have made the disaster preventable. One of two things has occured here. Either Casey and his team failed to make the necessary provision for off site backup or they did not have the necessary finances to do so. Neither is an acceptable answer.
CouchSurfing chose to adopt a model of donations rather than that of advertising or subscription and because of this the users have every reason to be annoyed that there will be no attempt to rebuild the site. Casey has clearly put a lot of his time into developing the site at the expense of his own travel but given the amount of money put into the service by users it seems wrong that he can just cut and run.
There has also been suggestions that hospitalityclub.org a rival service had some hand in the crash. I believe this as much as I would believe that Casey is on a jet to the Bahamas with everyone's donation money but conspiracies are conspiracies I suppose. It is nevertheless clear that hospitalityclub will attempt to soak up some of the suers from the fallout, you can make what you will of such action.
Tags: CouchSurfing, Web 2.0, Monetization, Donations
This is really sad news for all of us. I loved the site and all the wonderful people I met through the CS Project.
I have set up a support forum for lost surfers and couches - you can find it here:
Couch Surfing Support Forum - Europe
I will move it to a dedicated domain if it gets popular, 7 people joined in the first few hours of it going live so it may well grow a lot.
What I am asking is please email the link to the forum to all you Couch Surfing contacts. The forum will only work if everyone knows about it!
It's mostly aimed at surfers in Europe, but of course anyone is welcome!
Please spread the word, there are a lot of lost couch surfers out there, and I think the forum can help them out.
Love and Peace,
Jeff from Stockholm
http://www.sitespring.eu/couchsurfing-forum/index.php
Posted by: Jeff Burns | July 01, 2006 at 12:16 AM
"Either Casey and his team failed to make the necessary provision for off site backup or they did not have the necessary finances to do so"
how much does this cost? I have reason to beleive that CS was quite happily covering admin costs with donations.
Hospitalityclub conspiracy is a stretch, but couldn't help noticing a number of arguably inconsiderate post replies(replicated word for word- cut and paste job) immediately advertising the exitence of HC. Salt in the wound.
Be assured this will be cleared up. Too many people are too angry and upset.
Posted by: benji | July 01, 2006 at 12:30 AM
check out the site, looks like something is happening at least. http://www.couchsurfing.com
Posted by: benji | July 01, 2006 at 12:34 AM
You can discuss the future of couchsurfing here
http://thecouchsurfingbuilding2.hyperboards.com
Discuss what should and should not be done to build a better couchsurfing site
Posted by: p | July 15, 2006 at 05:34 AM