I've actually experienced the opposite..

With couchsurfing, i've tried both hosting and surfing. Hosting felt like I was managing a free hotel - the guests seemed to have little interest in hanging out or socializing at all. They just stuck to each other. Maybe my mistake was allowing couples instead of individual travellers. I never got a chance to surf, all requests were denied, I get the sense that you basically have to be female and traveling without a partner to succeed in surfing. Context: 29 yr old asian american male, no deformities or anything like that.

With AirBnB, most of the time, it was just a business relationship, but I did form a few friendships which lasted a while.

Of course, anecdotes are not proof - I think it really shows that it is more the luck of the draw than anything else.

I think it has more to do with expectations than the money per se. AirBnB is first and foremost a business relationship, and it's probably common that neither person wants any more out of it. If I hit it off with the host I might recommend them to friends, but actually pursuing a friendship... probably not. Whereas getting to know the hosts is part of the appeal of couch surfing.

As another example, clubs and classes are a great place to make friends because you already have a common interest. You can become friends with the instructor/leader no matter what the monetary arrangements are. Whether there are dues or class fees, if the instructor gets paid a token or reasonable amount. Of course, the more of a profession it is for the instructor, the more likely they are to be spread thin across classes and students. But again, that's not the money per se.

This year I'm planning on actively expanding my network by taking advantage of the vibrant nightlife scene here in Vegas. I'm also going to check out any cool meetups I can find, even if they're not 100% in my areas of interest. I think it's important to put oneself out there. If someone really feels valuable as the person they have become/are becoming it's a sort of gift they can give to their community, whether locally or online or what have you.

AirBnB pretends to be a social matching service with money just for covering expenses.

What? How? Airbnb is just a hotel alternative, most of the time I get keys from some kind of locker and don't even see my host

The companies that run the "sharing economy" surely want you to believe that, but I don't know anyone who thinks about AirBnB that way. Do you have any links that show them projecting that image?

This article doesn't pretend that the friendships are real. They are 100% commercial. They exist because of a personal void that must be filled. If there were non-commercial (free) alternatives, people would be using them.

For better or worse, once I got into my mid-30s, I started wondering about dollar signs in people's intentions in general, unless I met them in the context of a hobby.

I used to travel to new cities pretty often for training work, and people I was training would be good at taking me out once or twice. But a few times I thought it would be cool to be able to hire a 'guide' to show me some cool places in the evening: good food, drinks, music. Someone who'd even be up for teaching me a bit of the language, when I'm out of the anglophone world. I wasn't interested in anything romantic, so I never felt brave enough to hire an escort.

I think it would be cool to have this kind of thing: AirBnB for Friends, but I don't think my need was a 'personal void' to be filled, just a function of being a social person with a socially unconducive job.

It may be a personal void for many (perhaps most), but shouldn't have to be.

[Edit:] Also, "wondering about dollar signs in people's intentions", yeah, same, but another reason that a specific transaction wouldn't be a bad thing.

I think the issue with a service for finding friends is that it will inevitably be used by people looking for "friends" of a more romantic nature and either by reputation or officially becomes a romantic service as that's what the majority of the users seem to want.

A service to find someone to hang out with and show you around while traveling would end up becoming "Uber for Escorts" or some kind of Uber-Tinder hybrid.

For example Adult Friend Finder was started to actually find friends:

>In 1994, Andrew Conru created the first online dating site, WebPersonals. After selling that site in 1995, he launched FriendFinder.com, an early social networking site intended to help people connect with likeminded activity partners, in 1996.[3] Days after the site went live, Conru found that people were posting naked pictures of themselves and seeking partners for adult-oriented activities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_FriendFinder

There could be a market for it. Or a system that facilitates it. A friend of mine once visited Hong Kong, and crashed on the couch of a friend of his. That friend said, "I'm going to be out of town, but here's your phone, here are the friends of mine that you'll be hanging out with while you're here." I thought that was very cool.

Counter anecdote: Made some great friends through AirBNB when I rented an apartment for a few months in NY. We had a tradition where we would grill up different meals every Sunday on the back patio. After I left, the guy on the lease got a cat and named her Sunday. I still drop in when I'm in the area and we BBQ and trade tales. I think the length of the stay makes a big difference.

Overall I agree that it is self-defeating to directly pay for a friend. But you can find friends everywhere, even (indirectly) at the opposite end of business transactions.

maybe money has something to do with it, but the way the two websites are marketed/positioned definitely plays a role as well, as it creates a bias in the hosts.

couchsurfing is marketed as "a great way to meet locals", as a way to find new friends, so people who list their places on it are more likely to be interested in making friends with their stayers.

airbnb is mostly positioned as a "turn your home into a hotel" website, so many airbnb hosts operate it like a business and are not necessarily looking to make friends with the clients.

I've travelled to a LOT of countries and here is my experience using Airbnb and Couchsurfing.

The places that I used couchsurfing are the most memorable. I travelled for a whole year in 09-10 and the 5 times that we used couchsurfing to stay at someone's place was incredible and I'm still in contact with 2/5 of those stays. 40% hit rate I guess. Back then Airbnb wasn't a thing (or wasn't a big thing, can't think at the top of my head when they started) so it was either hostels or couchsurfing. You get different flavours of travel between those two. You meet more travellers in hostels which is a very different trip and experience vs staying with a local and hanging with them. It's interesting to see the perspective change between just the accommodation choice.

This year I travelled for 3 months and since I was working remotely I wanted to make sure I was productive and had my own space to think and do work with good wifi. So that meant NO hostels really. Horrible wifi in them, they're loud and usually dorms meant not a lot of me space. When looking at private hostels compared to Airbnb rentals the price wasn't that much more for a full studio in most cities so I stayed only 3 nights in hostels the whole trip.

Airbnb is great for feeling at home (full kitchen, couches, etc) and having everything you need to be productive and I made sure the wifi was great in each place before booking. But when grabbing the whole place I never interacted with my hosts since they weren't there. I never did stay in a private room so I can't comment on that experience and getting to meet the hosts that way which would probably feel more couchsurfing like.

But I did a hybrid take on my travels. I stayed in Airbnb places but would reach out to couchsurfers to meet up. And the response was so much better when you don't need accommodation since a lot of hosts just get bombarded with automated messages begging for 'free' places to stay. It helped me meet a lot of individuals in every city we stayed and it was the same great feeling when I stayed at people's places on the last trip.

The hybrid approach was pretty awesome and made me not feel lonely since the couchsurfers were a great source of information on what to do and explore and much of the time they did those activities with me.

I am still in contact with many of those couchsurfers from this past trip as well. I've hosted in my place and found that hosting helped connect also. I've never rented out on Airbnb so I can't comment on the other side of that.

Another data point on the other side: an AirBnB host I met in LA and I hit it off, and are still friends years later. We're not 'close' exactly, because we live opposite sides of the world, but we're in touch often, we cheer on the achievements of each other's kids and share our harebrained schemes.

i'll replace this notion of friend with a metric of how much time is spent with a person

i agree with the comment noting expectations, and also want to emphasise that i have spent lots of time with either type of houseguest

but what i have found interesting is it is easier to fall into spending time when the money exchanging hands is roughly the amount i would want to pay for the service

for instance, on airb.. i have set my price on the room i offer both under, on, and over what i myself would want to pay for the room

when i charge less than what i would pay for my space i can get guests that i feel are rude or disrespectful to me, my home, andor my neighbors

if i charge more than i would want to pay for the space, i can get people who have high expectations: arguably, fair expectations on what they get for the price; or are just absent because someone else paid the bill and they are there to work

when i charge a rate that i think would be fair if i were to be paying for the space i find i spend more time with the people

the worst part is when you enjoy the time you spend with people you know are going back home across the country or globe

Right. In GAAP, the technical term for the difference between a business's total assets (minus liabilities) and it's valuation price is "goodwill".

I'm not sure you can fairly compare bringing people into your own home vs. short-term stays in other people's homes. The context is completely different.

You might be right that money plays a part, but it is far from the only variable in play.

I'll abstract that concept one step further: there can be no friendship if there's any (real or perceived) power difference, like in this case employer and employee.