Boom Shakalaka: Couchsurfing Version

What is your dream country? You know what I mean, the country you’ve always wanted to visit. The country you’ve always wanted to live in or work at. Is it close to you? Well, then you can skip this whole thing.

Just kidding, keep reading.

I have a lot of countries I would really like to visit. Korea, London, New York, Australia are only a small amount of them. But you know what my problem always is? Yep, you guessed correctly. MONEY. Nobody ever has enough money to visit all his favorite places. If you add the airtickets, the hotel and your food it is quite expensive. But what if I told you, you could save some money by leaving in a house for free?

I didn’t think that was possible either, until me and my friends (Angie, Veni, Maria, Irene, Helena and Alex) discovered Couchsurfing. It’s basically a platform that allows you to find other people that are willing to give you their couch (well, you can also hope for a bed) to stay for a few days. You can also do the same for other people.

We decided to see how Couchsurfing works for our class “Mobile Reputations and Collaborative Consumption in Sharing Economy”. Helena had already used Couchsurfing so she shared with us how it works. My main focus was seeing how it follows the four principles of collaborative consumption: trust between strangers, idling capacity, critical mass, and belief in the commons.

Indeed, couchsurfing is hugely based on trust. Would you trust a complete stranger living in your own home? Of course not, right? Well, that’s why couchsurfing tries and make him not a stranger. Sort of. By searching a user’s online profile you can learn a lot about him. His studies, tastes in music and friends.

I created a questionaire and selected fifty random people that said their opinion about couchsurfing. A surprising amount of them had used it. Not many of them trusted it though.

I think what’s great about it is that it allows you not only to save some money, but to also communicate with another human being. You get to know him, and who knows? Maybe you’ll make a great knew friend.

So, what do you say? Are you on board?