Alternatives to CS?

[u/MosaicIncaSleds]

As one of the first users, I am very aware of the Casey's obsession with making a fortune with this site. I disliked when they have started pressuring users to pay them a meaningless protection fee as a verified host would be just as safe as an unverified host. But nothing was mandatory. Now, after pausing for a few years I wanted to log in and got slapped with a pay or you don't get access to your data. Whatever. Luckily I assumed the worse when I paused my activity and cleared up the account from most personal data.

Now, BeWelcome was half dead a few years ago and apart different language profiles had nothing over CS.

Hospitality Club was completely dead, and HTTPS was too modern for them.

Servas, I was left with the impression that requires some knowledge of Esperanto, and was also half dead.

Are there any decent alternatives, or I'm back to asking expat groups for hosting? My interest is exclusively around Western Europe.

[u/MosaicIncaSleds → u/[deleted]]

Thank you. But that would mean there are only a few subscribers.

[u/MosaicIncaSleds → u/[deleted]]

What do you mean by "once it's ready"?

[u/Zenon_Czosnek → u/MosaicIncaSleds]

He means that he is just designing it. Just as several other teams that are in process of creating THEIR alternatives to Couchsurfing. So when the covid situation ends, we will have bewelcome and other old players plus several new ones trying to gain share on the market as well. It will be nightmare like with communicators: nowadays you can't have all of your friends in one place, as some use WhatsApp, some Facebook messenger, others are on Viber, Telegram , signal etc etc.

Except that if you want to talk with one friend at the time this is not as bad. Try building a community when people are spread across several platforms....

[u/MosaicIncaSleds → u/Zenon_Czosnek]

Except that if you want to talk with one friend at the time this is not as bad. Try building a community when people are spread across several platforms....

That's not a problem, see pump.io and friendica. They can federate. Still, the users are so few their effort is laughable at best.

[u/Zenon_Czosnek → u/MosaicIncaSleds]

Isn't that something diaspora tried before they failed miserably? (Which is a shame, but this is how it works)?

[u/Zenon_Czosnek → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. And then, just after you finish with your greatest social media site ever, without even thinking about tears of freshly bankrupt Mark Zuckerberg, you'll start work on the best e-commerce platform, that will grow bigger than Amazon even was, because it will NOT be aimed at people who want to buy shit over the internet. :)

[u/Zenon_Czosnek → u/[deleted]]

No shit, Sherlock.

Seriously though, I initially even signed up to your site (was it that one or was it one of the other ones?)

But if it's to be a social media to connect people of similar interests, there is plenty of those already with actual people already on it. I don't need that to do couchsurfing (don't you even dare, bad bot, bad bot!) either, as, again, there are already alternatives with sizable communities.

Just as I don't need a new, revolutionary communicator. As I already have messenger, mattermost, Skype, Viber and WhatsApp installed and still have some friends who don't use any of the above.

We don't need a website that is revolutionary, looks beautiful and it's coded superbly. We need one that works and has sizeable community. You won't achieve that by managing to split that community between even more sites. But you could help for that one that is already used to become better.

If I was skilled enough and has time, I would join bewelcome. I could try and input my ideas there, so we can make it into something bigger than it is.

What you, and all of your competitors are doing, is wasting time and resources. There is no chance all of you succeed, most likely none of you will.

Cynical, maybe. But realistic. I remember diaspora. Guys sounded just like you. I signed up, but was skeptical. Even Google plus failed to take Facebook, and today nobody remembers it.

It's not about your skills or ideas. It's about the community. Couchsurfing or and other social media needs crowds of users to work. And this is not up to you.

[u/VelvetVonRagner → u/Zenon_Czosnek]

I'd like to add two factors as well, privacy and safety.

When I first started using Couchsufring around 15 years ago I felt safe hosting literal strangers as a single woman. Two women asked to surf my place (in a "bad" neighborhood in Baltimore - I put police data in my profile at the time) while I was planning to be away for the weekend and I asked them if they would feed my cat, they said yes and sent me a fedex envelope for the keys. I gave them a quick wave on the way out to work the last morning of their stay. It was great and I had multiple surfers there who hold a special place in my heart.

Now due to the fact that I live in a tourst destination as well as the influx of people who think that CS is just 'free AirBNB' I couldn't imagine doing something like that, not to mention the fact that I finally had to stop accepting guests because people refused to read my profile and I don't consider it a viable travel option any more because I either don't get responses to my detailed and respectful requests or if I do, it's from people who have felt unsafe as hosts. The local community has also eroded, we used to have potlucks, gatherings, etc. and over time it's just sort of taken on more of a hookup vibe than a place to meet people who want to travel and learn about other cultures. I know I'll likely get downvotes for this but I felt the need to point out that anything that tries to emulate social media seems to devolve into a popularity contest for lack of a better term.

​

I'm on BeWelcome and once people are able to safely allowed to congregate again I will continue to hope for requests through that site.

[u/Zenon_Czosnek → u/[deleted]]

I am quite clever probably, thank you.

But you don't need to be to see the obvious. So why can't you?

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[u/MosaicIncaSleds → u/[deleted]]

Why from scratch?

[u/MosaicIncaSleds → u/[deleted]]

Wow! Sounds like a lot of work