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On this day of celebration for some, I’d like to share with you 10 reasons why I continue to use CouchSurfing.com.

1. I have and continue to meet wonderful, amazing people through CouchSurfing.
2. CouchSurfing has more members than BeWelcome.
3. My messages or profile updates are not held for manual approval on CouchSurfing, unlike Hospitality Club.
4. I can arrive in a new city and be confident there will be some local CouchSurfers to show me round, potentially host me, and so on. I don’t have that confidence with other sites.
5. Generally, the system works. It has downtime, I would describe it as unreliable, but overall, it works at least 90% of the time for me.
6. In most major cities, there is an active CouchSurfing group. The groups are a great resource for meeting locals, finding events, and getting to know a city.
7. Likewise, in most major cities there are regular CS meetings which are generally filled with interesting people. I find the meets a great place to meet locals in new cities, more so than individual emails.
8. I have built up a reputation and profile on CouchSurfing, it will take time to establish that profile elsewhere, and there are currently no easy means to do that.
9. I, occasionally, use the related to feature, which shows how you’re connected to other people on the site. (If we could search based on that, it would be a major bonus).
10. Finally, I continue to use CouchSurfing because it’s become a habit. Habits are notoriously tough to break.

I wanted to share this list to remind people that OpenCouchSurfing is not full of CS haters. In fact, many of the most active openCS supporters are very active CouchSurfers.

If you celebrate Christmas, have a very merry Christmas, if not, have a wonderful day.