One way to look at AirBnB is as a craiglist plus escrow service. The idea is they spammed people advertising rental properties on craiglist to get them to visit the AirBnB site and it has worked so far. Eventually, though, all the people advertising on sites like craigslist will have migrated over to AirBnB and then the growth ends.
The escrow service seems a little dodgey since they are not licensed (see Greenspan's critique - he was roommates with one of the founders of AirBnB). Few major incidents so far, but how long will that last as they scale? The attraction of AirBnB over craiglist may be that the hosts perceive some added degree of safety by using AirBnB. But really, how much liability is AirBnB taking on? Can you sue AirBnB if your property is destroyed? Good luck with that.
What if another site that has an even faster interface pops up and uses a growth hacker to lure away hosts listing their properties on AirBnB? Then what? Acquire them out of fear!
The web is a medium. People use it to advertise things. It's hard to believe that any one company can monopolize a medium like the web for some class(es) of goods or services. But it sure looks like they can, doesn't it?
From For Sale ads in Usenet groups to a mailing list that grows to a website (craigslist) to AirBnB acting as an informal escrow agent to _______?
The interesting thing is that Usenet was originally free. As long as you had an internet connection, you could advertise for free. I'm not sure I understand why advertising still shouldn't be free. And we should be able to reduce the signal to noise ratio, and make doing business via internet more personable and trustworthy, without having to pay a spammer who acts as a dubious escrow agent and takes a percentage.
I have never used craigslist nor other classifieds sites, and neither have any of my family members, nor my work mates, nor the friends I meet on a weekly basis.
Yet me, my brother, a colleague and two friends have booked nights on airbnb. The growth will end when all of my colleagues, and all of my family and all of my friend use it, and they'll know about it because every time they ask me "so where did you sleep" I'll answer "found this cheap place on AirBnB".
The escrow service seems a little dodgey since they are not licensed (see Greenspan's critique - he was roommates with one of the founders of AirBnB). Few major incidents so far, but how long will that last as they scale? The attraction of AirBnB over craiglist may be that the hosts perceive some added degree of safety by using AirBnB. But really, how much liability is AirBnB taking on? Can you sue AirBnB if your property is destroyed? Good luck with that.
What if another site that has an even faster interface pops up and uses a growth hacker to lure away hosts listing their properties on AirBnB? Then what? Acquire them out of fear!
The web is a medium. People use it to advertise things. It's hard to believe that any one company can monopolize a medium like the web for some class(es) of goods or services. But it sure looks like they can, doesn't it?
From For Sale ads in Usenet groups to a mailing list that grows to a website (craigslist) to AirBnB acting as an informal escrow agent to _______?
The interesting thing is that Usenet was originally free. As long as you had an internet connection, you could advertise for free. I'm not sure I understand why advertising still shouldn't be free. And we should be able to reduce the signal to noise ratio, and make doing business via internet more personable and trustworthy, without having to pay a spammer who acts as a dubious escrow agent and takes a percentage.