Can I just point out that Airbnb has a far superior name and domain name? I mean Wimdu sounds like a character from Star Wars, while Airbnb has the "bed and breakfast" abbreviation built right into the name.
This is a totally subjective thing, but they both have terrible names, IMO. Airbnb is slightly more memorable but equally horrible to actually say aloud.
Actually Airbnb is a terrible name because it conjures up a distasteful (and inaccurate) mental image of what their service provides.
An Airbed is a horrible rubber thing that you sleep on at a friend's house that deflates in the night leaving you lying on the floor surrounded by sagginess. Therefore an Airbed-n-breakfast must be a place where you can expect to get that sort of experience, but for a price.
That mental picture kept me from even bothering to check out the website the first dozen or so times they made the front page here. I'd wager it's costing them a lot of money from people who simply refuse to check them out because they don't want to sleep on an airbed.
Notice that none of the listings on airbnb show anything like a trashed studio apartment where you'll be expected to sleep on an old couch with dead pizza boxes under it, but ask anybody on the street to describe an "airbed and breakfast" and that's what you'll get. But if you don't force yourself to ignore the terrible name and give them a shot, you'll never find out.
For my money I'd rather be called something nosensical than something off-putting.
I once spent half a day looking for that site with a terrible name that let you rent good apts for short periods of time.
So, from my experience, Airbnb has a terrible name. I also had no idea that bnb in Airbnb actually stood for something... Looks like you just saved me half a day sometime in the future, thanks.
Every startup prides themselves on being the disruptor the industry until "me-too" clones come along and they get pissed because the disruption is short-lived.
Build a good product users want, treat those users well, and you'll be fine.
At some point, shouldn't the readers of HN consider themselves the market makers? This constant hearsay about who is making money and who isn't...tiresome.
"The attention of consumers can shift instantly and make the most profound investments obsolete in just a few years, soon to be sped up even further. We will see economic empires crash within hours, and new ones arise just as quickly.
The task of the economic manager now is to try to hold monopolies in place just long enough for economic transactions to occur."
I first read this while still in high school and it left a huge impression on me. (Big enough that I still remembered it just now, over 15 years later... wtf?!)
Does VRBO do partial apartment rentals? I've used both (Airbnb for the first time this week), liked both, but have the impression VRBO is entirely whole-house rental --- and significantly more expensive.
From the article, it sounds like these new sites are literally clones. They are scraping Airbnb listings and posting them on their own sites. They aren't just using the idea of Airbnb, they are using the content.
While i've nothing against Wimdu (or AirBnB), I am against putting insane amounts of money into something that not only is a "clone" of another business, it is also what I define as a business that does not exactly "push humanity forward".
I could give a myriad of better uses for that $90 million:
- Keep the SETI initiative going (and along with a few arrays)
- Any tpe of medical (cancer, genetics, etc) research
- Next generation wireless infrastructure networks
At some point, each person decides how much value something provides to themselves or others and acts accordingly. You put a lot of value in the items that you list, others put value in things like Airbnb. To claim that because Airbnb doesn't "push humanity forward" (by whatever measure you imagine that to be) that it is somehow a waste of money is a bit much. For one thing, $100MM sounds like a lot of money, but in the big picture of "pushing humanity forward" it is almost nothing. Secondly, as a society, we aren't going to put 100% of our wealth into those items, or any other list that one person considers "important". So why is it so terrible that it is going to something that provides many people real value (as they define it for themselves)?
No investor cares about pushing humanity forward, they care about making money on their investments. And that's okay - since in most cases the amount of money made is proportional to the value something creates.
I actually think that making travel cheaper and more enjoyable, connecting visitors with hosts, utilizing unused space, etc. are pretty worthy objectives.
[+] [-] patrickgzill|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|14 years ago|reply
An Airbed is a horrible rubber thing that you sleep on at a friend's house that deflates in the night leaving you lying on the floor surrounded by sagginess. Therefore an Airbed-n-breakfast must be a place where you can expect to get that sort of experience, but for a price.
That mental picture kept me from even bothering to check out the website the first dozen or so times they made the front page here. I'd wager it's costing them a lot of money from people who simply refuse to check them out because they don't want to sleep on an airbed.
Notice that none of the listings on airbnb show anything like a trashed studio apartment where you'll be expected to sleep on an old couch with dead pizza boxes under it, but ask anybody on the street to describe an "airbed and breakfast" and that's what you'll get. But if you don't force yourself to ignore the terrible name and give them a shot, you'll never find out.
For my money I'd rather be called something nosensical than something off-putting.
[+] [-] pacemkr|14 years ago|reply
I once heard of Airbnb on HN.
<fast-forward a few weeks>
I once spent half a day looking for that site with a terrible name that let you rent good apts for short periods of time.
So, from my experience, Airbnb has a terrible name. I also had no idea that bnb in Airbnb actually stood for something... Looks like you just saved me half a day sometime in the future, thanks.
[+] [-] spb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbrooks|14 years ago|reply
Build a good product users want, treat those users well, and you'll be fine.
[+] [-] pandakar|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HSO|14 years ago|reply
"The attention of consumers can shift instantly and make the most profound investments obsolete in just a few years, soon to be sped up even further. We will see economic empires crash within hours, and new ones arise just as quickly.
The task of the economic manager now is to try to hold monopolies in place just long enough for economic transactions to occur."
I first read this while still in high school and it left a huge impression on me. (Big enough that I still remembered it just now, over 15 years later... wtf?!)
--> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01/channeling_pr.html
[+] [-] pitdesi|14 years ago|reply
I'm not trying to be flippant, really wondering what is new about AirBnB (other than a much better interface)
[+] [-] bradly|14 years ago|reply
The designs are very, very similar. Blatantly so, imho. Even the logos are in the same style.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hvs|14 years ago|reply
That's just what I can glean from the article.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] danilocampos|14 years ago|reply
I think you might have answered a decent chunk of the question in your parentheses, there.
[+] [-] kinkora|14 years ago|reply
I could give a myriad of better uses for that $90 million:
- Keep the SETI initiative going (and along with a few arrays)
- Any tpe of medical (cancer, genetics, etc) research
- Next generation wireless infrastructure networks
- Any viable cleantech startup
And the list goes on and on and on and on..
[+] [-] hvs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristofferR|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pbreit|14 years ago|reply