Why do I hate you, airbnb!?

Editor's note: The original "Why I hate Airbnb", author Ciline is a mobile medical field entrepreneur. She is a long-time user of Airbnb and wants to talk about the results of her experience.

I am a fan of Airbnb, the feelings of Airbnb summed up is: envy, jealousy, plus hate. Few platforms have the ability to assemble transactions, social, cultural, visual, artistic, and emotional elements like Airbnb, and the platform's own product details and operational details are well grasped by culture, vision, and humanity. Is it possible to have another industry in a country where there is no taste, no trust and a clear hierarchy, and the emergence of a platform such as Airbnb and a perfect combination of social networking? The conclusion of this thinking always makes me sad and indignant.

Trading and socializing are not so much a combination of the two as Airbnb perfectly.

Taobao tried to do social, Tencent tried to do the times of failure of electric dealers, people lamented that the DNA determines the direction of the company, social can not talk about trade, trading can not play social. There are countless entrepreneurs who mention the introduction of social concepts on trading platforms, but what they can and can do is shallow, at best, through the social platform of account systems, relationship chains and feeds sharing.

As an early leader of Tencent's open platform, I did see a lot of such attempts, also efforts to promote third-party developers on the platform to do more such behavior, but finally we found that the real use of social links to play only two types of applications, the first category is the game, the second category is a universal game, the other is a beautiful vision of innocence.

And then I realized, the real perfect combination of trading and socializing depends on the positioning of the platform itself, and if a trading platform introduces social elements without affecting its existence, or whether a social platform introduces a transaction that does not affect its positioning, then how to introduce the other elements to combine is far-fetched. And the Airbnb itself is--there's no airbnb! if there's no deal, no socializing. So it is not so much a perfect combination of the two that it is the combination of the two.

"This is the author's breakfast at the landlord's house in Seattle with the other boarding travelers," Airbnb.

Making choices because of socializing

Why is it that there is no social Airbnb? In Airbnb, when we choose a residence, it is not simply a comparison of geographical location and price, we are concerned about the landlord's self-introduction, spend a lot of time reading the tenants of the landlord's evaluation, will be before the reservation and the landlord exchanged messages.

Sometimes I choose his home because the landlord is an Internet professional, and sometimes I choose to rent a family that has children of my own age because I travel with my kids. My choice behavior, is no longer pure by the star, the price and the geographical influence, more will because of the social factor, to each other person's factor to affect, this is Airbnb the social basis.

The pleasure of paying and collecting money

Social positioning has brought about a pleasant mood for buyer-seller transactions. When I spend money to live in a hotel, I will be angry because the faucet is not good, I will argue with the front desk to change rooms, or give a bad comment, I think I spend money, everything should be good, and everything is well should be.

And live Airbnb is not so, the landlord will tell me: "I'm sorry, this faucet a bit not good," I will say "not a problem". When I leave, I will never be unhappy because of that faucet. Because I choose to live in a lot of time because the landlord feel good and not for the tap to use or service in place, most of the landlord is also because of extroversion, enthusiasm will open his home to let others come to stay (those who make people unhappy landlord will naturally be Airbnb with algorithm to hide), So both the landlord and the tenant are very happy, this can avoid the transaction process of a lot of small trouble.

Product details and emotional operation

During the holidays, I received Airbnb's email saying that my former landlord mark sent me greeting cards and holiday greetings. It reminded me of that delightful trip in LA, when I opened my email to see the E-card, and there was a hint to send a holiday greeting to a few other landlords and my guests, I ordered a button and then simply gave my other landlord a blessing, I believe that some of them will give more people a blessing ... I call this emotional viral transmission.

Now Airbnb has added a few friends to Facebook with the landlord, because I haven't experienced it yet, but it sounds like it's just a Airbnb social feature, and it's better to simply show the Facebook page to each other directly.

The first time I rented a house on the Airbnb, I didn't know how to get the landlord to believe what I said (I was a citizen) I said you can look at my Facebook (because there are a lot of words and photos of my history), but it was Airbnb blocked out (because it was afraid that I would be able to communicate with the landlord in private).

Airbnb's trading process is very complex, tenant selection date-Send a message to n landlord-landlord reply-landlord change-landlord pre-approval-tenant payment + Withholding Gold-booking success-accommodation-tenant rating landlord + Landlord rating Tenant-Deposit return-transaction end, so complex process, I have never been confused as a landlord or a guest. It's not because I'm an Internet person, I see other tenants on the Airbnb, and it's the first time I use Airbnb, but the booking process is smooth. This complex process involves countless interfaces and corresponding logic, countless branches, the need for product and research and development of how the process can be polished so carefully that new users will not lose and lost.

One more detail: When I choose my home, I leave a message for my first candidate, Sasha, I knocked on the "Hi sasha,i am ...", when I left a message to the second candidate, Kurt, opened the message interface, the input box already has the default appearance "Hi Kurt, I am ..." Using the logic of machine language to guess what I'm going to do next, the details of the experience, even if the product manager wants to do it in the past, in a company that is quick to profit, the proposal will be indefinitely postponed ...

Aesthetic！ Aesthetic！

Airbnb's pursuit of beauty is almost extreme, and it will impress your heart at the first glance when you open a website or app. It presents a beautiful picture, but it's not that we do it with a nice background picture of a website or app--because Airbnb's photos aren't meaningless decorations, and behind each breathtaking photo is a destination to travel and a room to rent with a price, That is, a dream that is far or near but can be realized.

Airbnb also pursue beauty at all costs. After I registered my apartment in Shanghai, Airbnb called me to say that there will be photographers to take photos of our house, and then there is a foreigner photographer and I contacted to confirm the filming time, imagine how many housing is they personally door-to-door to shoot, such a heavy operation does not sound like the internet company should be the practice, But Airbnb will insist on pursuing what it deems important.

And in the Airbnb, I found the place where I had always been so pleased, I thought Airbnb's house was all great, until I saw an intelligent algorithm about Airbnb artificial plus machine to present quality content in the front, poor content is difficult to see or even see, I realized why I had to hang my apartment on the Airbnb for the first time, and sometimes I could search it and not find it.

At that time, I did not have any evaluation of the apartment, photos were taken by my mobile phone. This also shows that, not the more the better, Airbnb adhere to the Ningquewulan principle, and if we do the trading platform, of course, is what put what, in order to increase their SKU, in order to meet the "tune" We thought.

Every time I think about it, I'm crying for the medical profession that I'm starting now. When I was just transferring from the tourism industry to the medical profession, I said to my friends, "travel is a better place for a group of people who have a good time, and medical care is to help those who are suffering become better, so medical care is more meaningful!" "Can the result be more meaningful or create meaning don't know, but can certainly be: no beauty to speak!" The patient itself is unhappy even sad painful, the doctor is also the mood heavy pressure is huge, does not have one side is happily connected on the other side because of the joyful matter. And there are only three kinds of trading results: "Eliminate pain", "alleviate pain" and "continue to suffer", except for the first kind, the results are still unpleasant.

But, just when I feel close to despair, but also gradually witnessed some different moving, it is wonderful to feel that life is the best thing in the world, disease is the test of life, those who face disease still smile strong, those who help others through the difficult people, those who do not sleep to save lives, And the feelings and trusts that flow between them are another pure beauty. I just don't know how to share it with the world.

The change of the Times
Airbnb's success is only a sign, heralding a new era, people's consumption outlook, pay trend, has begun to rise from the material or brand itself (for vanity) to the spiritual and cultural level.

People start to choose a residence because they feel good about the landlord and start to choose a phone because of the identity of the person who makes the phone. Therefore, it is very important to focus on people's consumption ideas and habits in the future. In the education industry, the preschool is a relatively free and open field, I have met parents many times to follow a teacher to transfer to their children, and medical changes can be seen, the policy has brought about the loosening of doctors, doctors can start to move to different hospitals practice, in the future people will also likely to move for the doctor's move, People who see a doctor are no longer directed at a hospital, but follow their own doctors.

I am very obsessed with the combination of trading and socializing, but also trying to think about which industry can have such a combination, it is definitely not Taobao sellers and buyers, and certainly not a drop of taxi drivers and passengers ... But most likely, doctors and patients. We're trying to combine trade with social networking in the healthcare industry, the relationship between the doctor and the patient, this is inseparable from the service trade and the relationship between people, and come to see today, the relationship between doctors and patients can be found in a lot of relationships, but it must have happened in the face, meeting between the Doctor and patient, and pure online physician-patient communication is not socially-generated.

We will continue to explore the way in which the medical profession trades with the society.