> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
“ Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company”
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
How? The reviews aren’t visible until after the window of time to review is closed or the review has already been submitted. AFAIK there’s no way to retaliate.
There is no threat of retaliation for reviews because hosts and guests can't see each other's reviews until the review period is expired or they have already left their own review.
The Airbnb review process is so weird I can only assume it’s actually broken.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?