We now have 1 million homes on @airbnb. Adding over 3,000 a day.
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 7, 2014
Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky announced in the tweet above that Airbnb now has a million homes listed on its platform. The listings cover globe, with concentrations in the bigger cities but a surprisingly large number scattered about smaller towns and out-of-the-way places. It's an amazing accomplishment for the startup but being such a prominent member of the sharing economy is not without its perils from regulators and lawmakers. The company is taking steps to stabilize its place legally, but it's going to be a a tricky path to thread.
Airbnb announced back in September that it was putting a 14 percent tax on its listings in San Francisco as a way to placate suspicious city lawmakers who had been attacking the company in its hometown almost since it began. By cleverly allying with some friendly local politicians, Airbnb even got a law passed in San Francisco to make its self-imposed tax part of a package of regulation it could live with. It clearly sees this as the future of its business, looking to work on similar legislation in Chicago and other cities.
The sharing economy is a weird balancing act. Disrupting a business system by its nature means upsetting people who like the status quo, but how startups handle those regulators and older companies can define a lot of the company's future. Uber, probably one of the few sharing economy companies at the same level of recognition as Airbnb, has chosen for the most part to simply ignore regulation it doesn't like. Not that it won't work with cities like D.C. to come up with solutions, but it also quite obviously doesn't see bans as something to impact how it operates.
How much the "growing up" that Airbnb is attempting might hurt its standing with customers looking for a cheap stay is hard to say. Airbnb obviously hopes that it won't turn off enough people to hurt the bottom line, but there's no way some people at least won't be driven away by a new tax. New features to help business travelers get around and offering Internet of Things-connected thermostats to help reduce energy costs will help get more people on the platform, and the company has already hinted at more special offers to come.
At 3,000 new listings a day, Airbnb will hit 2 million homes in a little less than a year, maybe a lot less if the rate goes up. If it can solve its regulatory issues, even just in some of its biggest markets, it could very well define what people think of the sharing economy for a long time to come. Its fans just have to hope that definition isn't as a cautionary tale.
