Peer2Politics

Airbnb’s smartphone apps just got a fairly major facelift. The redesign, rolling out for both iPhone and Android, will make the process of finding a place much prettier–search results now have full-width pictures instead of dinky thumbnails, and each listing gets its own travel mag-style page that stylishly mixes photos, reviews, and nuts-and-bolts info. The biggest component of the upgrade, though, is something many Airbnb users probably won’t ever see. It’s a totally new mobile command center for the company’s hosts. But even if travelers don’t use it themselves, it stands to make the Airbnb experience better for everyone involved.

 

How I became a victim—or a perpetrator—of the sharing economy, at least in the eyes of the New York attorney general. (How I became a victim—or a perpetrator—of the sharing economy via Airbnb.

A city in which 8.7 million people live cheek-by-jowl is a delicate ecosystem. Airbnb needs to think harder about how it can become part of it.

Sharing economy companies have an obvious incentive to make peace. Operating under the threat of fines, lawsuits and shutdown is not exactly a good long-term strategy or a magnet for investment. Earlier this year, Lyft happened to take $60 million in funding while Airbnb took $120 million. Venture capitalists that put up that kind of money surely want any uncertainty resolved. Many sharing economy companies have had to nimbly react to potential scandals, including Airbnb which created a $1 million guarantee against property damage after one incident garnered widespread attention.

Until recently, online room rental service Airbnb resisted efforts to regulate its booming business. When cities tried to get the company to collect hotel taxes, the response was essentially this: Your laws are outdated and don’t apply to innovative businesses like ours.

Airbnb unveiled new versions of its mobile apps and a series of additional features Tuesday morning during an event for hundreds of hosts in the sleek and expansive lobby of the company's new headquarters.

If you've visited New York or ever hope to and want Airbnb as an option when you travel, please stand with New Yorkers who are trying to save Airbnb.

Sites like AirBNB and Sidecar let people obtain services in a peer-to-peer way that was impossible before the Internet, but are those services disrupting or supplementing the industries they're in?...

If you've visited New York or ever hope to and want Airbnb as an option when you travel, please stand with New Yorkers who are trying to save Airbnb.

Thanks to a poorly written law originally designed to stop slumlords from running illegal hotels, the New York Attorney General's office is going after Airbnb hosts. Join me in telling New York State Senators: Legalize sharing!

On today's "Charlie Rose" a conversation with the co-founders of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk and Brian Chesky.

In a setback for the sharing economy, the Office of the New York Attorney General has issued a subpoena demanding data about all Airbnb hosts in New York.

Airbnb has until the end of the day to provide user data on 15,000 New Yorkers who have hosted on the popular apartment-sharing site Airbnb. (Snags in the sharing economy.