These are pretty campy and zany...pimping out the sheep, chocolate meditation, lots of Olympians sharing their expertise (how many Olympians are on their platform?)...and unusually uniform high ratings for each one. But how is this really different from Youtube which people are so used to (and free)? Youtube has videos I didn't even think were possible, and the content provider gets their share (presumably from advertising and clicks) and the viewer gets free content. It's really hard to excel when there is a free parallel and widely known platform already in place. I love the idea of user-generated content, but let's just say that there's really no arbiter of quality there (every blogger is a journalist kind of thing). If every rating has the Wobegon Effect, then it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm a sucker for all those farm animals though...
It's great that Airbnb is thinking outside the box and throwing everything at the problem and trying to help its business survive. I wish it stayed more true to its initial calling which was "sharing", and I hope post-COVID that it shrinks back toward that model. As in a similar service the little old ladies provide with their Sobe (spare) rooms when you get off a ferry in Croatia. That's the old school Airbnb model (which is a great model).
Here's some sobering text from the kind of paper that will cause an adjustment of your monitor to its "right"-full place, the Wall Street Journal. Assuming it's accurate, then 2/3rd of Airbnbs are ones I wouldn't pull out the world's smallest violin for since they no different than any other overextended investor run amok. The rest of the hosts (the 1/3rd with 1 property or a shared property) can do as any gig worker...go out on the internet and sell their special sauce, just as the link you provided suggests they are doing. If it works and people dig it, why not?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bargain-with-the-devilbill-comes-due-for-overextended-airbnb-hosts-11588083336
"AirDNA estimates that a third of Airbnb’s U.S. listings for entire homes or apartments—excluding shared rooms—are by hosts with a single property.
Another third are run by hosts with between two and 24 properties.
The remaining third involve hosts with more than 25 properties.
Some of those hosts renting 25-plus properties are managed by startups such as Sonder Corp. and Lyric Hospitality Inc., which pay to rent hundreds of apartments they sublease on Airbnb and elsewhere. Many of those companies have furloughed or laid off staff in recent weeks."
