Skift Take
The successful apartment sharing and rental service will definitely see a drop in users, both because of privacy fears and worries that the tax man or city regulatory agencies will find it easier to crack down on non-payment or illegal rentals.
… Going further than any significant consumer tech company has before, the peer-to-peer travel accommodation site, valued at $2.5 billion, wants to combine users’ online and offline identities with a process that includes checking official photo IDs.
It’s a gamble. In order to better foster a service where users are on their best behavior and feel comfortable trusting each other to stay in their homes, Airbnb will risk the ire of privacy defenders and the loss of users that comes from the friction of a more complicated registration process.
“We are drawing a line here and saying we don’t stand for anonymous experiences,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in an interview last week at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. “We don’t think you can be trusted in a place where you’re anonymous.”
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Tags: airbnb