The modern couch potato

by Jerry Guo on

While I was backpacking across Peru the last couple weeks, I kept hearing about couch surfing. (And not the lazy TV-watching kind). Apparently it’s become the rage of late, traveling not hostel to hostel, but couch to couch.

The most established organization–and nonprofit to boot–that connects you to complete strangers who will host you while you’re traveling is the Couch Surfing Project. We introduced it last year, when it was already a couple years old (but still considered in its infancy).

Now it’s hit prime-time. Membership has apparently tripled in each of the three years it’s been up, averaging roughly 5,000 new members each month. The editor of Budget Travel, Erik Torkells, nicely sums up the reasoning behind the phenomenon’s booming popularity. “If I couch surf I could be on some cool ex-pat’s or local’s sofa. I’ve already leapfrogged barriers. It would take weeks under ordinary circumstances to get in someone’s home.”

I think the next time I’m in South America, or anywhere else, I’m going to try being a couch potato.

Couch Swapping Now on Facebook

by Justin Glow on

CouchSurfing.com, the popular travel network which allows its members to offer up their couch to fellow travelers as free accommodation, could have some major competition in its future.

Travel community TripUp has recently developed a Facebook application that mimics the Couch Surfing project. Members who have added the application to their Facebook profile can list their own couch as a home for fellow travelers, as well as browse a map of other members who are offering up a couch.

The biggest advantage of this is being able to tap into Facebook’s huge worldwide network — a reported 30-million users. The Couch Surfing project has over 270,000 members according to TechCrunch.

But will TripUp’s Facebook application take off? It takes a certain personality to open up your home and couch to passing strangers — something the Facebook crowd, in general, won’t necessarily be willing to do. The Couch Surfing project is well-established and robust, while TripUp’s is severely lacking in important features such as a verification and rating system.

I’ll stick with CouchSurfing.