Not Alone in the City: Couchsurfing 2.0.

The CouchSurfing Project is a free Internet hospitality service that launched in 2004. With over 700,000 members world-wide, couchsurfing.com averages 30 million daily page views. The concept is based on an existing social convention: the couch exchange. We have all borrowed a friend’s couch, and we’ve probably referred people to someone else’s couch. Trust built upon the strength of the referral.

Couchsurfing.com accelerates and enhances the hospitality process by acting as an internet-based social networking hub and matching prospective CouchSurfers to possible hosts and activity partners. To date, there are 543,520 couches found in 299 countries. However, it cannot be stressed enough that the CS Project is not about providing free accommodation, although that is a definite perk. The CS mission is: “To internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding. As a community we strive to do our individual and collective parts to create a better world, and we believe that the surfing of couches is a means to accomplish this goal.”

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This philosophy, thus far, sets couchsurfing.com apart from other social networking sites, and not just because there is an actual philosophy. Facebook is great for rekindling old relationships and maintaining existing ones, while MySpace is best suited for keeping your friends up-to-date with your interests and what is happening in your life. Roy Abraham, a Toronto City Ambassador from New Zealand, astutely pointed out that “CouchSurfing’s purpose is to seek out and maintain NEW real-life social connections.” Maria Pelufo, a Canada Country Ambassador, told me that some hosts even specify “no one night stands” on their profile because they would like a minimum amount of time to get to know their guests.

CouchSurfing speeds up the time it takes to develop a deeper level of social comfort. When being thrust, by choice, into a complete stranger’s home, you and the host are going to work at making the other person feel welcome and respected. If the prospect of staying with complete strangers sounds daunting, I have good news. They won’t be strangers for long. In addition, if you are feeling wary about welcoming travelers you don’t know, I can assure you that being a host involves a fair bit of self-selection. Roy expands on the aspect of choice further: “It’s important to be selective when hosting or surfing. That’s why profiles are so important. For myself, I try to choose people that I have some similarities with because you’re only with them a short time. But you have to be open-minded and willing to try new things as well.”

Anfernee, Maria, Abe and Garry showing us how it's done at the weekly CouchSurfing meetup. This happens Mondays at the the Java House, 537 Queen St. W., at 7 pm.

There is a wealth of information about individual CouchSurfers and hosts. Member profiles play a fundamental role in the CS process, and CouchSurfers take them at face value. CouchSurfers want to know as much as they want to tell about themselves, and they all seem to provide a great deal of information. In addition to visit references, you can find out how many CS friends a member has, and more importantly what kind of relationship they have with these people. On CS, friends are distinguished according to type and depth of relationship. For example, I’d give a high rating to my sister and much lower rating to a new couchsurfing friend I just made. There is also a vouching system that is fairly strict. The only drawback is that there are some places where the number of CouchSurfers makes vouching impossible, so the element of chance is never completely eliminated. That’s also what makes it exciting.

The CS community represents a real cross section of society. My interviewees tell me that they’ve met so many different people, from wealthy lawyers to frugal students, but what they’ve all had in common was an open attitude and a willingness to meet new people. Garry Choo, a Nomadic Ambassador, also told me that there are many, many vegetarians.

While travelling abroad, CouchSurfing allows for a level of positive cultural exchange that you will not find while staying in a hotel or on a cruise ship because you’ll be living amongst locals and experiencing their daily lives with them. This holds true whether or not you’re in Morocco or Montreal. Rhonie, another Toronto Couch Surfer, told me “Couch Surfing provides that perfect opportunity to…get a real inside look into the way people live in different spaces.” She goes on to point out that “Couch Surfing encourages integration instead of segregation“. Roy echoed similar a similar statement: “[Couch Surfing] challenges anti-social behavior, especially in larger cities.” Score one for people who smile, look people in the eye and chat people up in line! According to Maria, “You don’t need to be alone in a city ever. It’s a lot like instant community.“

Garry established a weekly Toronto CS social last August. Every Monday, 20-40 people (both CouchSurfers and random guests) show up at the Java House (Mondays, 537 Queen St. W.) to mix and make plans. There is a variety of travelers and locals, so it is not unusual for hosts and new CouchSurfers to make arrangements right there. This event’s success is also due in part to exposure on the CS Toronto newsgroup found on the website. City groups tend to be the most active, with several people posting all manner of social events on a daily basis. Postings are as diverse as inquiring if anyone would like to join a last minute caravan to Niagara Falls, or an announcement for a round of Mah Jong. The group is fully accessible on the Internet, so whether you are a CS member or not, you can find out what is happening and just show up.

In case you were wondering just how invested the CS community is in the project, I have a little history for you. The current website is called The Couch Surfing Project Version 2.0., that was created after a data backup mishap that wiped out Couch Surfing Project Version 1.0. in June 2006. It was a dark time for founder Casey Fenton, who posted on the website that large amounts of crucial data were irrecoverable and that the project would not be able to continue. The community immediately rallied together; more than 2000 emails were sent asking that CS not be shut down. Coincidentally the timing of this disaster coincided with the first ever CS Collective in Montreal. Collectives are like conferences where members come together to come up with ideas for improving the website and the CS experience. The outcry was loud and the response was swift. By July of 2006, a hardworking team of CouchSurfers managed to get the site back on its feet in 4 days.

The Couch Surfing project owes its functionality to extensive use of internet applications and to the trust, dedication and enthusiasm of its community members. This amazing social phenomenon challenges several stereotypes about living amongst strangers, urban life and web-inspired social interaction. In reality, we are not all as isolated as we think. There is a whole world out there, ready to be experienced one couch at a time.

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