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I’m moving on from Couchsurfing.

[I've copied this from my blog, here] So, a couple of months after resigning from CouchSurfing.com I’m ready to announce I’ve started my own project that I’m calling “share the love” (it’s a working name, but I like it so far).I like what BeWelcome.org is working on, but I figured that I had some ideas I wanted to try out that would mesh better in its own system.Here are a few of them:

  • Network driven searching (people who are friends, or friends of friends show up in search results first).
  • “Couchme” reserve couchsurfing (Ask someone to come stay on your couch).
  • Tagging (more on this later).
  • I’m predicting critics will say that it will be difficult to compete with Couchsurfing.com because it has critical mass. That’s not really how I’m measuring success in this case; since my goal if more for people to download the software and run their own hospitality exchange networks. I’m planning some webservices-foo so that networks will be able to exchange information and search across each-others user base. Having a distributed system might help reduce some of big-brother problems I have with Couchsurfing.com (or about any other social network). You can check out the project here: Share the love.

3 Responses to “I’m moving on from Couchsurfing.”


  • Morgan,

    every project or effort which promotes understanding and hospitality between individuals or communities should be considered a great effort. Sometimes, however, things move faster if you share the work, the motivation, the network with people who head in the same direction.

    I want to invite you to not only have a closer look at BeWelcome and how it works, read the many documents we provide under http://www.bevolunteer.org, especially the BeVolunteer concept.

    We are at a stage where many things can be realised, many ideas implemented. Your are more than welcome to share your ideas with us – if you want.
    Contact me for any questions or suggestions you have.

    All the best,
    Florian

  • I forgot: BeWelcome works under a GPL – open source policy. This is the least we want to offer our volunteer specialists!

  • Florian,

    Thanks for the offer. I like what BeWelcome has to offer, and you’ll see the occasional patch from me.

    I’ve updated why I’m working on Share the Love (now Crash at mine) here:
    http://mtocker.livejournal.com/28700.html

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