Around The World - One Couch At A Time
“This is one of the best ideas of the century, probably the most open minded vision of the world ever.” so goes one of the testimonials for The Couchsurfing Project.
The way to Couchsurf is quite simple - you pledge to offer your couch free to other surfers, and promise to give them a true cultural experience (or at least your own version of it), and in return, you get the same across the community, in the process making friends, and in a bigger picture creating a more sensitive, more culturally tolerant world,
Couch surfing takes an ancient notion of hospitality and tucks it into a thoroughly modern paradigm, the social networking Web site. But, as its members say sternly, it is not a site for dating, or for freeloaders. However, as this article states, there have been instances where couch surfers had romances, have married, and even babies.
While this is a brilliant marriage of the best of the online and offline worlds, topped with a dollop of romance, it also has a number of security features built in. For instance, every user is linked to the other users he or she knows in the system through a network of references and friend links, along with vouching and optional verification systems. Finally, however a more secure experience would probably come about via experiences of the community with other couchsurfers, etc. Lets hope noone sets down to game the system.
Personally, I think this is a great project, and last when I checked, so did 318,662 couchsurfers across 31,238 cities in 220 countries.
Filed under: Digital culture, Ideas & Innovations, Website Alert