sad… this great site should serioulsy get rebuilt by someone… These guys were definitely on to something.

I read about this week two weeks ago and signed up and donated $25 in anticipation of some future travel.

The $25 is not a BIG deal but I definitely did not get my money’s worth. I’m wondering if I should disput the charge or not.

Definitely dispute the charge; that’s the best thing about using your credit card: you have security in case the merchant you’re dealing with goes out of business. Non-delivery of the item you paid for (cs service, in this case) is a valid reason and any decent CC company will refund you.

Fire the CEO of the company. This is inexcuseable. I don’t think he puts a good case!!

copy of comment - http://nonecknoel.com/grayspace/iamacouchsurfer

if i was paid a dolla for everytime i mentioned the site couchsurfing.com - i would have made a nice salary for the past six months. it has come to my attention that couchsurfing.com is dead. my good buddy, ss trudeau, IM’ed an article from techcrunch.com detailing CS’s demised, and after one mandarina ye don Q — something doesn’t smell right.

i am a former systems admin. i know what it takes to support enterprise infrastructures. after reading all the comments on techcrunch, and i can see there are quiet a few…. hummm, jackasses who think they know the entire situation. am i going to profess that i do, i can not help but to agree with pete mellor’s statement -

Couchsurfing belonged to more than just Fenton. He’s slinking out of a responsibility that he himself admits has benefitted him for years. Why isn’t he asking for at least help to come up with a Plan B, a way to rebuild and pass the torch if he’s tired of it? He doesn’t have to stay on if he’s burned out, but at least pass the ridiculous fire he’s talking about on to the next person who is willing to carry it for a while? 90,000 members and he can’t find a single person to help him at least come up with a plan B?

i am one person who would glady join the fray and help make couchsurfing 2.0!
i am committed to making a thriving karma economy.

couch surfing was a way of life - we traveled the world to meet new and interesting people. we did not care about the couch nor the hardwood floor, though a nice soft couch was always a bonus. we cared about the person/s who would would open their house and let a perfect stranger share their roof. this was not a business model, but a life model! we can change the world one email, one IM, one knock, one phone call, one meal, one cup of coffee at a time. i will never forget my couchsurfers nor my hosts. regardless, what has been said - my world will never be the same.

i am committed to helping the world share in the same social networks i have come to experience.
i am committing my project management experience and fundraising talents to the community.

i am still a couchsurfer!

ps - couchsurfing crew - contact me to rebuild… you should have already have a copy of this….

The paragraph beginning “I have devoted…” reeks of a “this business has failed” sentimentality. Having heard some of the most ridiculous excuses ever when it comes to web-based businesses failing, when a catastrophic event happens related to the core of the service, the business is in a position to recover. Not recover as in “put the pieces back together and hope that we can restore SOME data” but recover as in “rebuild since, you know, we have people who have paid for this service”. Telling your base that “maybe this is a sign from the universe” is an astrologically-influenced tech founder’s way of saying “we have no money to refund; let’s just pretend that this is no one’s fault and move on”.

A month (or 3) ago they should have just announced the business needed to be reorganized to be sustainable; making up some sob story about the data failing when they were “between back-up methods” (who pulls the plug on backup A before backup B is online?) has just set off my personal BS alarm.

And I’m not even a customer!

Well, it looks like the “core team” is meeting to talk about what to do next, as of Saturday around 1PM Central. Check out the update at http://www.couchsurfing.com .

I actually didn’t find about this whole collapse until about 10 minutes ago, and it certainly is saddening, though absurd. While I hadn’t used the site extensively, when I came across the site (using StumbleUpon no less), I was highly intrigued and signed up right then.

Michael’s right, there is a need for this kind of service, and though there may be somewhat different alternatives out there, I think Casey should look at this as a chance for him to begin planning, designing, and eventually introducing version 2.0 to his nearly 100k fellow surfers.

As you probably know by now, this is pretty much a hoax. The founder was in a deep financial crisis and this is how he felt he needed to bail out. Amateurish and pathetic.

That last paragraph in the letter speaks bundles. This is what happens when one trusts divine intervention to intercede - she can be merciless!

Casey may have thought in a despairing moment that Couchsurfing was dead, but 90,000 couchsurfers wouldn’t let it die. Many people around the world have been working to save as much data as possible, and the Couchsurfing Collective in Montreal has also been working diligently to come up with a plan for a new and improved Couchsurfing. The new site is expected to launch in about ten days. Stay tuned. http://www.couchsurfing.com/

It’s looking pretty good now with “CouchSurfing 2.0″ predicted to be 10 days away (I wouldn’t complain even if it were 30 days) - check http://www.couchsurfing.com/

Looking pretty interesting - though you have to log in to get most of the details.

My initial reaction was - gee, that’s sad, but maybe we should all go and join another site - then there’ll be more people in one place and that makes a better community.

However, I’ve does seem like CouchSurfing was/is the best of the sites, and the community spirit is particularly strong, and there’s a sense of mission about the whole thing. Very idealistic, which is cool. Although I’m a cynical bastard, I do respect a desire to make the world a better place.

There’s a page here on the HospitalityGuide’s wiki which compares the various hospitality sites. Needs more work (if you want to add something, it’s easy to contribute - or add your comments at the bottom if you don’t know how to edit the table):

http://www.hospitalityguide.ne.....e_networks

Singkong a.k.a. Singkong2005 a.k.a. Chris

The details of the crash are funny on the couch surfing site

The database was in the intensive care unit with some of the best doctors in the world, but by Wednesday afternoon it was clear that we could not recover the data from the damage of the “perfect storm.”

Further, our Data Center in Atlanta has employed the FBI data forensics lab team to attempt to recover the data.

FBI data forensics lab ???

Ideas never die.

With the end of the origonal database comes rebirth. Couchsurfing 2 — after 3 years of change and development we’re left to rebuild from scratch — to me, that is a good thing; a fresh start and a chance to see who is truly committed and whether this idea is truly capable of standing through the test of time and turmoil.

I have faith.

Details of the Mysql database posted by casey here
http://forums.mysql.com/read.p.....#msg-99328

I think couch surfing sounds like the stupidest thing i’ve heard today. Probably not a terrible thing that it’s gone?

My company has a slogan:

“Only two types of people work here, those that do backups and those that wish they had.”

They would have been ok, if they had subscribed to an online databackup service such as nBackup.com

nBackup can be scheduled to automaticly backups your data over the internet late at night while your internet traffic isn’t being used.
It’s easy to use, and their is a free trial available.

I never used that couch surfing site but i know someone who has and loved the person they met who showed them around and they met there family and they had a great time and even made a friend in the process.

Seeing the site wasnt backed up and now is no more does that mean the owner will learn from his mistake and come back and start backing up his website?

I love it. The guy now states they only lost 11,000 profiles of which were just inactive users. What a crock - he used the emotions of his audience for a marketing ploy and it worked. This guy is a piece of work if you ask me. For that reason I will never be on that site again.

I don’t know when but they appear to have recovered and are up and running now: http://www.couchsurfing.com/

here we speak about COUCHSURFING