Hello everyone!

We are excited to announce that we now have over 50,000 members!!! To celebrate this occasion, we would like to share some updates with the community, especially since there has been a lot going on behind the scenes.

Volunteers are working tirelessly toward our upcoming milestone of getting out of the beta-phase and launching version 1.0 of the Couchers.org platform! To help us achieve this goal, we need your support.

🤝 How you can help 🤝

You can contribute in lots of different ways:

• 🤝 Volunteer with us! We’re really friendly and flexible 😊
• 💖 Donate to our 501(c)(3) non-profit to help us keep the lights on 💡💻
• 🎉 Organize or attend events in your community
• 🧑‍💻 Complete or improve your profile -- don't forget the "My Home" page of your profile!🏠
• ✨ Spread the word! Invite friends to sign up, create a profile, and attend events
• 📝 Write references for your friends
• 📱 Share Couchers.org (and your couchers events) on social media and in your local chat groups

🌟 The big picture 🌟

We are currently working on a move away from branding and marketing language based upon a comparison of Couchers.org with Couchsurfing™. Instead, we will focus on how Couchers.org is a modern, safe, and active couch surfing platform which is run by the community, for the community. While our Mission, Values, and Community Guidelines will remain the same, the rebranding will include many changes to the landing page, marketing, and communication language.

We are aiming to complete some key updates, new features, and non-engineering tasks before we can "get out of Beta" and formally announce both version 1.0 and the new branding language of Couchers.org. We are hoping to achieve this milestone by the start of summer!

🚀 Progress & Improvements 📈

We’ve achieved a lot over the past year! Our amazing team of volunteers have been working hard to build and improve the Couchers.org platform. For a full list of updates check out our Roadmap, but here are just a few accomplishments:

• 🔒 Launched a new safety feature called Strong Verification
• 🚵 Created a new event page and added an "invite the community" feature to events
• 🌍 Completed translation of Couchers.org to German, Portuguese (Brazil) and mostly Simplified Chinese
• 🔔 Expanded and improved the notification system for events and discussions
• 🏅 Added Profile Badges
• 📝 Created a new Volunteer newsletter and Zulip for Community Builders
• 🛟 Expanded and improved our Help Center so users can find answers and get support quickly.
• 📱Made significant progress in building a native app for iOS and Android (not yet released; still in development)
• 🔧 We addressed major tech debt and lots of under-the-hood fixes!

🎉 New feature alert! 🎉

Communities now have a Members tab where you can see all members of that community.

Get active in your communities! Not much going on in your local community? Create an event, start a discussion, and host or meet up with travelers. If you’re interested in helping to grow your local community and improve the Couchers.org platform, consider becoming a Community Builder!

🛡️ Safe & active community 🛡️

With our goal of being the safest and most active couch surfing community, we have been working to improve safety, support, and features that help active users find and engage with other active users. Here are just some of the things we are currently working on:

• 🛡️ Safety & Moderation Features: In addition to Strong Verification and phone number verification, adding address verification, new moderation and reporting tools, and more.
• 📝 Active Users: Adding search filters to make finding active users easier, highlighting users with complete profiles on the map, encouraging users to complete their own profiles, implementing activeness probes, etc.
• 🗺️ Ironing out core features: Improving map search & filtering, signup flow, hosting & surfing flow, reference flow, notifications, events, and community pages.
• 📰 Communication, Marketing, & Outreach: Sharing release notes on new features on a regular basis; revamping our blog; rewriting our landing pages, and our core marketing copy; writing a gentle introduction to couch surfing to help newbies understand what the concept is (and is not) about; promoting Couchers through marketing and social media.

For more detailed updates and technical insights, check out our GitHub. A friendly reminder: Couchers.org is entirely built and maintained by volunteers in our free time! We’re passionate about couch surfing and constantly looking to grow and improve; We are always open to feedback from the community.

👥 New board member 👥

Couchers, Inc. is also excited to welcome Nicole onto the Board of Directors of the non-profit supporting Couchers.org. Nicole has been a couch surfer for a very long time and has been one of the most active contributors in the past year.

Thanks from all of us at Couchers.org! We’re excited for what’s next in 2025!

Written by Colleen and Jesse. Published on 2025/04/12

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