The biggest HospEx platform in 2012,
"CouchSurfing appears to fulfil the original utopian promise of the Internet to unite strangers across geographical and cultural divides and to form a global community". CouchSurfing used utopian rhetoric of "better world," "sharing cultures," and of much better access to global flows and networks of all sorts. It was featured as a means to achieve a cosmopolitan utopia.
Commodification of CouchSurfing terminated
"the existence of a project run as a flourishing commons, a cyber-utopian dream come true; an example of genuine exchange outside and free from the dominant logic of capital, a space highlighting cultural instead of monetary values, understanding instead of commerce. This space still exists, but instead of outside, now within the market." Many volunteers, who had become
brand ambassadors of CouchSurfing, left to BeWelcome and other non-profit platforms because of the change in legal status and insufficient management transparency. Non-profit hospitality exchange services have offered scientists access to their
anonymized data for publication of research on
trust and
cooperation. Before becoming for-profit, CouchSurfing offered four research teams access to its
social networking data. In 2015, non-profit hospitality exchange services Bewelcome and
Warm Showers also provided their data for public research. ==Notable hospitality exchange services==