Constructive look at the recent changes
Hi everyone,
First, this post is not a criticism, I believe we all want to better understand the situation and work together to find a way forward.
The CS team doesn't seem to care about the chaos they’ve created. They appear to accept the exodus of their most loyal members, which suggests a deliberate shift in strategy. It seems CS is pivoting toward a different community: younger users primarily interested in social meetups while traveling, rather than the core experience of hosting and staying with locals. It’s a total paradigm shift and since hosting is not a priority, hosts will have to find a way out.
I should add that, in my opinion, there is no equivalent to CS in terms of notoriety, quality, and active membership. CS held a monopoly, which is why members feel like they are being held hostage. We all know that moving elsewhere means losing years of history and connections (though some might be forced to).
Most long-term members are reluctant to accept this new model, not just because they dislike change, but because the lack of transparency feels suspicious and incorrect to them.
The app, as many have mentioned, feels rushed, "vibe-coded" via AI prompts and clearly wasn't ready to go-live. As far as I know, there was no beta testing, no prior announcement of such a major overhaul, and GDPR was not respected. It all happened so fast that no one could save their templates, photos, or bios. This was a massive and avoidable mistake. Changing a company's core mission is a decision that deserves better execution.
The pivot toward a dating/meetup-centric app is understandable from a financial perspective (those apps are profitable), and we can agree that Couchsurfing needed a refresh, and attract another generation. The question is: wasn't this done with too much haste?
I know asking to revert to the old website is likely a non-starter for the team: it would mean admitting their work was flawed. However, would it have been so wrong to run a beta test before releasing it to production? I do believe it is not too late to spend a bit more time before an official launch where everything works well.
Since last week, we’ve only heard from the staff once, with a generic message telling us everything is fine and we’ll "get used to it." Meanwhile, comments on Instagram have been blocked. This communication failure shows a total lack of respect for the members. The team seems small (which explains a lot the mess obviously) and ill-equipped for crisis management: watching a community leave in anger is never a good sign.
It’s possible CS is being sold to a larger group or that there’s more going on behind the scenes, but right now, we are all in the dark.
To the Community Manager reading this on Reddit: we deserve real answers. Not a vague blog post, but a detailed explanation and a genuine dialogue. It isn't fair to leave thousands of people in limbo. Every day that passes, more people leave, and the chance of bringing them back vanishes. Soon, it will be too late. We want the same as you and if you care about this website as much as I do, please communicate with us.