Airbnb CEO Asks Twitter What His Company Should Launch in 2017 He's received more than 1,000 ideas so far. Here are some of them.
By Lydia Belanger •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Consultants, focus groups and research only have so much power when it comes to meeting customers' demands. Thanks to social media, companies now have a direct line of communication with the people who use their products and services.
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky spent Christmas night on Twitter after he posed a question to his followers: "If Airbnb could launch anything in 2017, what would it be?" The tweet transformed into a thread of brainstorming, troubleshooting and partnership-building for the home-sharing marketplace.
If @Airbnb could launch anything in 2017, what would it be?
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 26, 2016
Related: The Smarter Way to Humanize Your Company's Use of Twitter
Some followers pointed out gaps in the booking specifications.
@bchesky @Airbnb A feature that tells you if the hosted place has a private bathroom, unfortunately none of this info does so accurately ? pic.twitter.com/8EVawPg12s
— Moaaz Sidat (@moaazsidat) December 26, 2016
Chesky engaged with many of the respondents.
@moaazsidat you are right, will fix
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 26, 2016
He was one step ahead of some users. His Twitter brainstorm session doubled as a way to gather ideas and promote forthcoming projects.
@bchesky @Airbnb Basically allowing users to search by the activity that's tagged, like "parents in town" or "Saturday morning in Madison" and allow ratings
— Andrew Foxwell (@andrewfoxwell) December 26, 2016
@andrewfoxwell broad, more activity oriented natural language search is coming
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 26, 2016
Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover reached out with an idea to collect the suggestions generated. Chesky said "sure" and replied with his email address.
@bchesky wanna do a @ProductHuntLIVE sometime and group together all the 2017 ideas? ? pic.twitter.com/S4tU9uRKnh
— Product Hunt (@ProductHunt) December 26, 2016
Other respondents proposed new platforms or user categories.
@bchesky "business" accounts with volume discounts (for SMB, not just enterprise), filter for biz travelers, w/ meeting rooms, workspace...
— Erick Schonfeld (@erickschonfeld) December 26, 2016
Some suggestions were a bit more ambitious, but Chesky took them seriously.
@bchesky airbnbs on mars.
— Veeral Patel (@vral) December 26, 2016
@vral working on that... no joke
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 26, 2016
Chesky is not the only executive to solicit feedback via Twitter. Elon Musk often shares and workshops ideas this way. In September, he tweeted at government agencies for help with an investigation into a SpaceX rocket explosion.
Support & advice from @NASA, @FAA, @AFPAA & others much appreciated. Please email any recordings of the event to report@spacex.com.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2016
Related: Jack Dorsey Explains Why Elon Musk Has One of the Best Twitter Accounts
Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey highlighted Chesky's use of his company's product, quote-tweeting Chesky's thread and giving it more exposure and momentum.
Love this https://t.co/XBi9LCFDwW
— ??jack (@jack) December 27, 2016
Less than 24 hours after his initial callout, Chesky tweeted that the experiment had exceeded his expectations a hundredfold.
1,000 ideas have been submitted. I was expecting 10. I think I'm now hosting a Twitter Radio show. https://t.co/DbrBSTDlCl
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 26, 2016
