We will need to have a score to define the search list order of a profile, right?
We could link that score to the age of the last login. So the maximum possible score is just falling with time. Isn’t that also planed for the standing score? Or would the standig score already define the search list order?
Yeah we’re going to develop a search algorithm (which will partially use standing), but I’m not sure priority should decrease with time away from the platform. Part of what we want to achieve is to counteract the super-host effect by introducing more variation in the hosts that are shown. We’ll probably have to test a bit to find the sweet spot where we show enough less active hosts to encourage them into being more active, and not too many that it’s hard to find hosts
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Nothing to add to that imo 
We could also come back to the original question:
I guess that would also be asking for more encouraging approaches? Like… what makes us happy to host?
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Better messaging regarding hosting, hangout and event opportunities would help keep people active. CS does send out e-mails letting you know there are people looking for hosts or upcoming events, but I think more could be done – like push notifications.
For example, Madison doesn’t get too many travelers, but if I had the option, I would love to receive an immediate notification whenever someone posts a new event or a public trip (looking for a host). Obviously this might not work for big cities that are super active (because you would be flooded with notifications), but having the ability to get more frequent messages or instant push notifications should help keep people engaged.
Ultimately though, the community aspect of the platform is going to be key to keeping things alive.
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There’s also nothing better to make me want to host than a well-written request message! So we could think about it from that end as well and give users more chance to try their hand at writing requests. We could have various fictional host profiles that users could send a request to?
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I’ve been clicking around on the map recently, looking for nice Couchers to reach out to in the UK. It began to feel like the vast majority haven’t “said anything about themselves yet”. So I began a little survey to see.
Note: I couldn’t do the whole country unfortunately, because of the way the zoom works with the numbers of people registered within a specific region, but here’s the one’s I could do. I tried as best I could to count them accurately, but may have missed a couple here or there. Same applies for the total numbers of registered users for a region, which may also have changed by the time you’ve read this. Anyway, you’ll get the general idea:
Scotland, UK.
Registered Users: ~76
Dead profiles: ~43 (56%)
Wales, UK
Registered Users: ~20
Dead profiles: ~13 (65%)
Norfolk, England, UK
Registered Users: ~9
Dead profiles: ~8 (89%)
South West England, UK
Registered Users: ~19
Dead profiles: ~11 (58%)
Trafalgar Square, London, England, UK
Registered Users: ~110
Dead profiles: ~94 (85%)
My point is that from a fairly random sample of registrants in the UK, it is plain to see that the vast majority of these accounts are inactive and have no zero profile information.
Why I think this is a problem:
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It does not make for excellent user experience, as it clutters the map, making searching less enjoyable (does anyone else have any experience of this?), forcing users to click/tap more to find active users (see below).
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A project built by the community for the benefit of the community needs a sense of itself. Who’s in? Who’s involved? Who’s doing things? Who wants to be a part of it? At the moment, trying to find active users in the UK (and I suspect in other countries too), is a bit like turning up to a huge party, wearing a great costume and a shopping trolley full of snacks, only to find out that most of the guest are mannequins.
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Dead profiles are dead. This is a project about aliveness. Whenever I see a dead profile everything feels a little heavier, a little less alive. I waste time thinking, ‘why bother?’. This is probably not a good feeling to give users so early on in a project.
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It possibly presents a false picture of Coucher’s active users:
- If we add up all my above data, I counted 234 users of which 169 (72%) are dead profiles.
- If we take the Couchers map at face value (on the 22nd May, 2022), then we know that there’s 714 Couchers registrants in the UK.
- If ~72% of these are dead, then ~28% (200) are active.
*28% means roughly 1 in every 4 clicks should reveal an active user profile. In my experience, this is far from accurate. For example, I just did a random sample of the Greater Manchester area and it took 6 clicks to reveal an active profile.
If we apply this 28% worldwide, then of the purported 13,727 members, just ~3843 are active, or have at least filled out their profiles to some extent.
Some solutions to stop the clutter:
- Better onboarding. Get people to fill out their profiles immediately. Find creative ways to encourage participation.
- Timb bomb. Users are reminded to fill in their profiles, even just a little, or their accounts will be deleted. Then actually delete them. There is no good reason to keep profiles that haven’t been filled in after a month or two. Delete them. Release their usernames back into the useable pool. It will make the project better for every active user.
- Filters. Allow active users to turn off inactive accounts when searching. (I appreciate that the “last active” filter can help to a degree, but it doesn’t differentiate between users with profiles who haven’t logged in for a while and users with dead profiles who signed up yesterday.)
Personal notes:
- I don’t actually care about quantity, I just want to easily find amazing people to hang out with and visit.
- In the long run, quality is everything. It’s still early days for the platform. If it gains a reputation as the place where you are most likely to find good people (because pretty well everyone has filled out their profile), it will encourage people to sign up and will encourage people to fill out their profiles too, I think.
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i agree there should be a filter for Last Login and Filled Out Profile (doesn’t CS has something like that?)
as for stats in Iceland, out of the 13 people, 6 have filled profiles and 3 have logged in in the past month (note, for some reason 1 person’s location is in Iceland but has their country set to US, why that is so i don’t know)
Thanks for doing all that work!
And now, Couchers is looking like CS. 
They claim to have hundreds of thousands of users, but when you search any place with a “definitely hosting” and “Last logged in date” of a month or less, MOST of the listings disappear. Then, if you look for their “reply time,” (can’t filter for that) and get rid of everyone whose reply time is a week or more, you’re left with very few choices.
So if you COULD deactivate or cancel in some way all the dead profiles, that would set you even MORE ahead of CS.
I just wish there were more Couchers in The US. I live in a small but very touristy location, and while I get CS requests regularly, have yet to hear from one Coucher. (I know. Be patient. You’re new. 
I don’t think it’s nearly at that level of disfunction, but I do think it’s interesting that dead profiles are allowed to continue to clutter the site, even at this early stage.
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Thanks for doing some numbers @gjw! About solutions, we had discussions about it but I guess the implementation is still in the works. Personally I believe we shouldn’t delete profiles but rather unlist them. I had shared a reminder message from findacrew that I found a good model in the topic Not enough active hosts. @itsi and @jesse also shared some good insights there I believe!
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Yes, it’s a good thread. Unlisting seems a reasonable compromise. Perhaps we should merge this one into that one?
It’s interesting how prescient the thread was a couple of years ago. It forewarned of clutter affecting user experience, and this has now happened (at least for me). Feels like a resolution should both be bumped up the list of priorities and made much of, in terms of how Couchers is communicated to users and potential signups.
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Thank you for running these numbers and for providing some helpful suggestions! There is definitely a lot that needs to be done to address these issues.
We’re seeing a lot of interest in Couchers, but since the platform is still being built and the community is still relatively small, currently there isn’t a lot to keep people engaged on the platform unless you live in a large city (where you’ll get requests more frequently or there are events being held).
With that said, we’re always look for people to help us grow the platform and help keep the community engaged. We’re always looking for core volunteers and community builders. We’re still working through a backlog of requests to create communities and people interested in being community builders - so as we work through that list we should see a lot of community growth as well!
Of course some additional upcoming features will also help improve usability and increase engagement:
- Highlighting active users on the map who have a filled-out profile
- Improved notifications (notifications of new events in your community, event reminders, notification of responses to discussion comments, etc)
- Require users to fill out their profile before they can send/receive messages or requests (proposed feature - still in discussion)
- “Paused” or “Inactive” profile status which would hide users from the map (proposed feature - still in discussion) if they have an incomplete profile and/or haven’t logged in for ages.
There are a lot of challenges. Since we are an all-volunteer team, software development is slow. We can speed that up by getting more software developers to volunteer. That’s a big focus of ours right now. There are also challenges with solutions like #3 and #4 above. In #4, what about people who live in a rural area who love to host but rarely get requests? They might only sign on once a month or even less, and we wouldn’t want their account to disappear from the map. In #3, creating hurdles during onboarding can leave people with a bad impression – and we might turn away more people who are relatively new or just aren’t hardcore couch surfers.
Lastly, it’s worth pointing out that our search algorithm was recently improved quite a bit by ranking the results based upon a number of different factors including (but not limited to, and also not in any particular order):
- Hosting status
- Last login
- Profile completeness
- Number of positive references
- Response rate
These factors are taken into consideration and result in “higher quality” hosts showing up at the top of the results.
In any case, lets keep brainstorming ideas of how to improve the user experience, increase engagement, and improve the quality of couch surfing overall – while keeping in mind the logistical challenges that our all-volunteer non-profit organization has and the diverse group of our userbase which is comprised of not only highly-experienced couch surfers but also new folks just getting started on couch surfing.
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Hi all,
I see some good suggestions to filter the members and improve the host/guest experience.
It is not an easy task to find the right balance between inactive, lack of interest, just trying, forgotten etc… users.
I can somehow share my personal experience so far since I am an early active member here and already received 2 requests, I hosted one and the other could not make it so he cancelled.
I have a habit of ALWAYS replying to guests-messages-requests no matter what and very few do this, either on CS or here, which is very concerning to me.
I have a plan to go to London, UK in July, I assure you it is not easy to find the right host because the feature of posting a trip on the profile is not yet present.
So making a choice is hard, writing to all in London is even harder and can be a waste of time and energy, because one has to open and read every profile prior to that, no one can do this, then sending a request without reading a profile can be interpreted as not-personalized and the host will not even bother to read it or reject it.
So 1 week ago, I sent requests to 8 hosts whose status is ‘Can Host’, 4 of them replied and rejected my demand.
4 others are still pending and I am almost sure I won’t have any reply even after coming back from my trip.
This is one of the reasons that makes members get discouraged and stop trying to login or update their profiles or just forget about it, no matter the service, it is similar situation on CS as I also posted my trip there, I had on Bewelcome a profile and deleted it as well because of the same issue, members don’t even reply to say Yes-No or anything else, it just keeps pending.
Of course few will reject without saying anything, that’s still OK.
But we still need to address the ‘Absence’ or ghostly situations so that everyone gets a reply no matter what the reply is, just to show she/he is active and interested in this hosting experience.
I have as well written to few guys in my area to try to organize something or meet up and of course, there were no replies either, do those people exist or want to exist? I wonder.
For me, not replying is NOT a reply, it is disrespectful (not many realize that) for the writer who is spending time to start something he believes the other members are willing to continue because they are here.
Thanks
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Can’t agree with you more, Ronba, that’s what bothers me as well.
Since my first steps on CS, especially in a popular touristy cities. Like on my first trip to HongKong I wrote over 30 personal requests to locals, half of which weren’t able to notice my existence. 
Even thou I know people might be busy, tired, overwhelmed etc … typing simple “no” or hit “deny request” button never appears to me like an extremely hard work.
It’s simply frustrating when open-minded easy-going hosts demand to read all sections of their profiles, make it personal, hiding here and there “magic” words ,creating a riddle which u have to solve before even type Hello on ur request - and after all those steps u r not considered as a person who deserved to get even a simple “no”? Uffffff
That is discouraging for sure. No wonder some travelers going down “copy/paste” road. U can go over it , not a big deal, but after several in a row, when pattern becomes quite predictable - Force leaves you.
I can see that “no answer is an answer” policy become a new normal especially in all kind of dating sites, where people prefer to “politely” ignore instead of speak and deal with “negative” feelings and any try to get a response putting u in a freak/stalker/dummy shoes. So u have to be smart and low ur expectations. Even thou there is nothing wrong with last two, Couchers is not a dating platform so It’s difficult to tolerate ignorance in hospex community, and it’s difficult to connect people who aren’t ready to take any responsibility.
As I see, for example, there r many empty/half empty/ last login 4+ months ago profiles in my region, which make impossible cooperation and interaction. Feels like certain people signed up just-in-case, to see how it goes, just to try it out, to keep it until You need it, with not much commitment for a moment. So it might be frustrating for those who trying to take it seriously. Cuz there not much u can do when u r surrounded by walking dead. 
I’m not sure what is the best way to deal with it, beside keep it positive and encourage others by words and actions. Reminders as well. But for sure it’s definitely helpful when you able to see a number of real active members to engage with, cuz the last thing I want for Couchers is fate of CS which in some places turned into an army of White Walkers. 
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honestly apart from a quote from some song that i have in my About me at the top of my profile, the first thing people see is my disclaimer about not writing copy paste requests, i wouldn’t mind so much being able to host every1 but i’ve often run into problems when people don’t read anything at all on it, i’m a heavy smoker and people who don’t smoke usually don’t like it at my place, if they don’t read that then it’s gonna be troubles for them when they arrive at my place, i also have a cat for those that are allergic, however if people do write a copy paste request i do reply right away and ask people if they could read my profile and send something more personal, if they don’t do that in a given time frame usually a day or two i just decline the request thinking they weren’t interested in surfing with me
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Hi,
Personally I don’t mind about the copy-paste text because I feel with the guest that it is time consuming to write differently for every host when there are many to contact or send requests to.
Of course it is important to read the host’s profile and know his environment and home rules before writing, but I can tell you that I have received many personalized requests from travellers who DIDN’T READ my profile, so it is not a true condition to demand something different.
I do respond to everyone and ask again if he read my profile prior to confirm any request.
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Hi Lele,
I didn’t want to elaborate further but what you have written matches absolutely what I think about the topic.
Users lack of responsibility when they are behind their phones or tablets, they think they can stay anonymous and still express themselves in an inappropriate manner, they forget they are dealing with a public audience because they can’t see the others.
It goes the same on all social apps including dating ones. No one is responsible or feels like, it becomes so easy to misbehave, act disrespectfully and go on like nothing happens.
I would propose a feature to remind a member when he doesn’t reply to a message or a request after a week and alert him that his profile would be put on hold until he gets back to the site.
I encourage the service to be free but somehow the negative side is that users create a profile and go away just to try it because they are curious but they don’t really care about hosting or maybe they will wake up when they want to travel and then they will be disappointed because many will reject their requests as they don’t have any activity or references.
I can forget logging in for few months because I am so taken by other priorities but I rarely reply more than 3 days later and that is very important to keep in mind.
That’s why it is important to wait a certain time for a feedback before deactivating a profile, everyone has reasons that can keep him from being frequently active.
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I appreciate Jesse’s response above sharing some of the roadmap for feature updates that could help with this issue.
I’m curious in your case Ronba, did the new “response rate” and “response time” fields for hosts seem to more or less match what happened in your case? I just did a quick search for hosts in London UK, and the search prioritization bit at least seems to be working. The first handful that showed up in the list for me were “Can Hosts” with response rates of “almost always” and response times of a few hours or less. Further down the list there were more maybes and multiple days or weeks long response times.
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To the broader point of frustrations around inactive or unresponsive users, it would be nice to find a way to gather some data to get a better idea of what is actually happening in a given instance. As some of the previous posts have mentioned there are many different possible explanations, or combinations of explanations for why people are inactive or don’t respond to hosting requests. I personally don’t like to speculate too much about people’s intentions or sense of “responsibility,” “respectfulness,” and so forth without at least some direct evidence of what exactly is happening.
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Hi Jason, I wrote about my personal experience but I did not intend to judge any specific members here regarding respectfulness, I was talking in general about social apps users and other experiences outside of here, social medias and apps are numerous nowadays.
Now I have another questions: how would a member, who has never received a message or a request, be classified by the system?
if the member never had the opportunity to reply because no one addressed him, would his rate be “never replies” or “long delay” or “inactive” ? etc…
I would notice this rate but I will not give it much importance, maybe some people were busy to reply in a timely manner but they will eventually reply and that doesn’t mean they won’t host or engage in any activity. We can still rely on them and share a great experience together.
While others who are rated “almost always” then suddenly they become “silent” towards one specific request because they are not interested to even reject it, how would that really help the traveller?
Although we all want to share here the same spirit, everyone behaves differently and has legitimate reasons to behave as such.
Plus, everyone can forget to reply to a message including myself. I can be very busy or distracted and forget to reply to someone then end up not remembering later, hence the reminder after 1 week or so that someone is still waiting for my reply, then if I don’t interact, no matter my personal reasons, it means I cannot be reliable.
When we need to plan a trip, we cannot wait last minute to be fixed, yes we think about a plan B but it would be too bad that a host doesn’t take the time to reply or would write back saying: Oh, sorry write back 2 or 3 days before travelling because I am not sure if I will be home or not.
Well, I am also sorry but I cannot make last minutes decisions and end up not having a host because this late one is not able to manage his time earlier. It would only work for last minute requests, which are not my types of requests.
To summarize, it is important to be reliable (which is becoming a very lacking quality) when we deal with the others, very few say what they think and do what they say, they change their minds or decisions so easily while keeping the others who are somehow “depending” on them in the “dark”.
Their definition of “freedom” is shadowing their sense of responsibility and this is growing every day.