Be Part of the Sharing Economy: Airbnb

Sharing economy, peer economy, asset light lifestyle, collaborative consumption--whatever you want to call it, technology and the internet have made it possible for millions of people to share personal assets. At affordable rates, interested users can now rent assets such as housing and cars from people who are willing to be hosts for a limited amount of time. According to The Economist:

Such “collaborative consumption” is a good thing for several reasons. Owners make money from underused assets. Airbnb says hosts in San Francisco who rent out their homes do so for an average of 58 nights a year, making $9,300. Car owners who rent their vehicles to others using RelayRides make an average of $250 a month; some make more than $1,000. Renters, meanwhile, pay less than they would if they bought the item themselves, or turned to a traditional provider such as a hotel or car-hire firm. (It is not surprising that many sharing firms got going during the financial crisis.) And there are environmental benefits, too: renting a car when you need it, rather than owning one, means fewer cars are required and fewer resources must be devoted to making them.

Image is from Airbnb.

The poster-child of the sharing economy, a company mentioned from the excerpt from above, is Airbnb. Started in 2007, Airbnb founders Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky were "just trying to get their makeshift website online so they could rent out air mattresses to guests in their apartment [and] called their service Airbed & Breakfast."Recently valued at $10 billion, Airbnb released a major rebranding effort that could lead to an expansion of other sharing services in the future. Chesky hopes that their new logo becomes a "universal symbol of sharing."

Here are some of the key points that the co-founders of Airbnb want Belo to represent:

• "Airbnb is about belonging anywhere. The brand shouldn't say we're about community, or our international [reach], or renting homes--it's about belonging."
• A symbol that "anyone can create, whether drawn on a mirror or etched in the sand, every single person can have their own impression of the brand."
• [In regards to other brands not allowing users to recreate their brand and cease-and-desist letters] "We wanted to do the opposite."

Previous Airbnb logo. Image is from Business Insider.

New Airbnb logo. Image is from Forbes.

What do you think of the brand new logo? Was the team responsible of the rebrand successful at portraying the essence of the brand? Let me know what you think by posting in the comments.