This blog post is part 1 of 2 on CouchSurfing. This will serve as a brief intro, and the follow-up post will talk about personal experiences of CouchSurfing.
You may not have heard of couchsurfing. It's the sort of thing that appeals to free spirits of every age, but apart from that, primarily serves a distinct population of globetrotting twenty-somethings (with a smattering of thirty-somethings thrown into the mix).
CouchSurfing "is a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit." With over 1.7 million couchsurfers, at the time of writing, CouchSurfing.com has facilitated 1,853,207 successful surfing or hosting experiences, and the average age of a surfer is 28.
The Profile:
CouchSurfing (CS) is a social network. Just like any other online network, when you sign up, you create a profile. What's different with CS is the focus of the questions they ask you to fill out: there are traditional categories like education, hometown, and music/movies/books, but there are also categories like "teach. learn. share" and "personal philosophy". These tell you more about the sociopolitical stance of members than any overt message or mission statement.
Perhaps the two most useful features of the profile are not in the personal description section.
References:
Whereas facebook and myspace have walls for chatting back and forth publicly, what CS has is a reference section. As members gain friends and meet people on the network, they write references for one another. On any given profile, you can see the references that person wrote for others right next to the references other people wrote for them.
References tell you what to expect from a host or a guest: Do they drink? Do they like to dance? Are they gourmands or do they like to cook at home? Will they keep the conversation going until late into the night or are they early risers? The fact that both surfer and host's experiences are visible on the wall means that you can glean information about the host in both directions: how they react to their hosts or surfers, and how their surfers and hosts react to them.
A reference can be positive or negative, and a negative reference can never be erased.
Finally, the truest measure of a person's reliability (once they have a few friends) is the vouching system.
Vouched For?
Since CS is all about letting strangers into your home, there is a system of checks and balances to prevent abuses of the system. "Vouching" is the highest level of trust one person can rate another with. The way vouching worked in CS's adolescence was that the innermost circle of CSers were able to vouch for other members. As more people joined, those members who had been vouched for three times gained the ability to vouch for other members.
There is a little logo on every vouched-for person's profile. It is of hands clasped together, and if they have been vouched for more than once, it has a number beside it. Vouching guarantees that x number of users believe that the vouched-for user is 100% reliable, and that they would trust the vouched-for user with their life. It is the number one thing that makes a user a desirable surfer or host. At this point, about 7% of the CS population has been vouched for.
Demographics:
For extended info, you can hit up their statistics page.
http://www.couchsurfing.org/statistics.html
You may not have heard of couchsurfing. It's the sort of thing that appeals to free spirits of every age, but apart from that, primarily serves a distinct population of globetrotting twenty-somethings (with a smattering of thirty-somethings thrown into the mix).
CouchSurfing "is a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit." With over 1.7 million couchsurfers, at the time of writing, CouchSurfing.com has facilitated 1,853,207 successful surfing or hosting experiences, and the average age of a surfer is 28.
The Profile:
CouchSurfing (CS) is a social network. Just like any other online network, when you sign up, you create a profile. What's different with CS is the focus of the questions they ask you to fill out: there are traditional categories like education, hometown, and music/movies/books, but there are also categories like "teach. learn. share" and "personal philosophy". These tell you more about the sociopolitical stance of members than any overt message or mission statement.
Perhaps the two most useful features of the profile are not in the personal description section.
References:
Whereas facebook and myspace have walls for chatting back and forth publicly, what CS has is a reference section. As members gain friends and meet people on the network, they write references for one another. On any given profile, you can see the references that person wrote for others right next to the references other people wrote for them.
References tell you what to expect from a host or a guest: Do they drink? Do they like to dance? Are they gourmands or do they like to cook at home? Will they keep the conversation going until late into the night or are they early risers? The fact that both surfer and host's experiences are visible on the wall means that you can glean information about the host in both directions: how they react to their hosts or surfers, and how their surfers and hosts react to them.
A reference can be positive or negative, and a negative reference can never be erased.
Finally, the truest measure of a person's reliability (once they have a few friends) is the vouching system.
Vouched For?
Since CS is all about letting strangers into your home, there is a system of checks and balances to prevent abuses of the system. "Vouching" is the highest level of trust one person can rate another with. The way vouching worked in CS's adolescence was that the innermost circle of CSers were able to vouch for other members. As more people joined, those members who had been vouched for three times gained the ability to vouch for other members.
There is a little logo on every vouched-for person's profile. It is of hands clasped together, and if they have been vouched for more than once, it has a number beside it. Vouching guarantees that x number of users believe that the vouched-for user is 100% reliable, and that they would trust the vouched-for user with their life. It is the number one thing that makes a user a desirable surfer or host. At this point, about 7% of the CS population has been vouched for.
Demographics:
For extended info, you can hit up their statistics page.
http://www.couchsurfing.org/statistics.html
CS is a good thing
Glad to see this item here. I've supported Couch Surfing on principle for a few years and invited about 30 strangers into my home. It's a great way to learn about the world through other people's eyes. I also learn about Toronto through the diverse eyes of people from all over the planet. Wow, while I was writing these very words I got a call from Japan requesting a couch for the weekend from a woman studying graphic design in the Netherlands. I'll update you on how it goes.