Mainstreaming of Airbnb, As Seen Through Descriptions in New York Times Stories
Skift Take
New York Times is a good barometer of mainstream zeitgeist beyond the bubble of tech startup world, and Airbnb has crossed the threshold of being a consumer brand known around the world in a relatively short time. This NYT "timeline" shows how, in its own arcane way.
Last week the March issue of Harper's magazine had a very interesting short column that is getting a lot of attention among the media set on Twitter: how the New York Times has described Buzzfeed over the years, as a proxy to tracking the meteoric rise of the company, and its mainstreaming among today's modern media consumers.
These descriptions in Times stories went from the strange in the early days ("a trend-tracking site") to the very familiar now that Buzzfeed is a huge machine ("Buzzfeed, the website").
That inspired us to test something similar in travel: how Airbnb has been described in New York Times stories over the years, a full 546 of them since the first mention in May 2009, almost two years after it was launched as "AirBed & Breakfast." That startup changed its name to Airbnb in March 2009, and has since changed how people think about short-term rentals.
It started with Airbnb'
