by Zoë Pollock
A window into the wild world of Couchsurfing.com:
I’d selected Fielding and my other hosts after scrolling through hundreds of profiles, winnowing out those whose narratives included the words “party,” “vegan,” and “free spirit,” and the phrases “I believe in the journey,” “Never stop learning, never stop loving,” and “Burning Man.”
Patricia Marx contemplates the act of staying with strangers in the age of the internet:
Has our relation with machines made us feel so deprived of human contact that we befriend anyone and shack up with whoever has a mattress? Moreover, how profound can a social connection be if it is arranged through paperwork and typically lasts only a day or two? “It’s sad when they leave,” Sommer, one of my San Francisco hosts, said. “But then you get another one.” People, it seems, are becoming fungible, and, as in a game of pinball, you score points by bumping up against as many of them as possible.
There's an environmental benefit as well:
One study by Urban Futures in Vancouver, BC, estimated that 29 percent of all homes had more bedrooms than people in them. That’s more than 220,000 empty bedrooms—a massive untapped reservoir of accommodations, already built, painted, furnished, heated (and sometimes cooled), and provided with bathroom and kitchen access. Channeling travel growth into existing homes rather than new hotels would bring big environmental benefits, as Finnish think tank low2no.org argued in an analysis of the carbon footprint of hotels.
Those seeking to capitalize on sharing are primed to do well:
Super angel Ron Conway recently identified [the sharing economy] as 2012?s hot area for angel investment in The Economist. And Fast Company deemed 2012 the “year of peer-to-peer accommodations,” thanks to the emergence of Airbnb clones that hinged off of the company’s outstanding growth.
The Dish 