One the social networking sites I recently made use of for the first time is Couchsurfing. The concept is simple. If you’re a traveller, you can meet up with people from the city you’re visiting. Some of them may even offer you a couch for a few nights. People can review what previous visitors/hosts had to say, decide who to respond to, etc.
It’s a great concept. I love showing people around Cape Town, and I love meeting locals when I’m travelling. The site makes doing both that much easier.
I’ve had an account for about a year, but I’ve only recently uploaded a picture, and some information.
Today I met my first visitor through the site, and got on really well. We’re climbing Lion’s Head on Friday (although that cold front may have other ideas).
Couchsurfing had a rough time in June 2006, when they lost their entire database. You can see some of the technical attempts to get the data back here.
The founder, clearly despondent at that point, gave up, and planned to close the site down. However, the resultant outcry, and offers of technical help, meant the site was restored better than ever.
There’s been some fallout since about the organisational structure. If you want to enjoy a fascinating case study about this topic, visit opencouchsurfing.org.
There are also alternative sites offering similar services, such as Global Freeloaders, bewelcome and hospitalityclub, although CouchSurfing seems the best to me.
Hey Ian
Its funny you should mention this. I was just in Paris over the weekend and found out about couchsurfing for the first time.
I met a bunch of great Frenchies, all of whom had met on CS (as they call it). One guy had hosted well over a hundred surfers. They tell me that Paris is now the biggest city on CS and from what I can see they have a thriving local community going.
Like you I enjoy visitors and I particularly like the idea of short bursts from random but interesting people from all over the world. Awesome!
I’m off to sign up right now, a new couch just opened up in Cape Town…
Hey,
Since you are interested in the free software movement, BeWelcome is going GPL.
It is one of the important differences as compared to the other sites. And it will do well in cape town where I’m staying as well.
cheers
– jared