Hi Guys,
In Berlin (Kreuzberg to be specific) and I'm look...
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Hi Guys,
In Berlin (Kreuzberg to be specific) and I'm looking for a Key Exchange. I'm not sure but it seems HoardSpot is de...
Latest reply
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Abstract
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We found the photographs in the listings can be misleading. Photographs taken with a wide-angle lens are distorted, and photographs taken with a narrow angle lens does not show enough information about the room, and in some cases would distort the spatial dimensions. This frequently causes guests to be disappointed when the rooms do not meet their expectations. Even though some hosts would like to share more information about their homes by recording a video, external video links are not allowed in the marketplace listings by Airbnb. We feel that it is fairly feasible and inexpensive for Airbnb to implement a feature to allow hosts to upload 360-degree photographs of their rooms. 360-degree photographs have many great features that can solve the problem and avoid side effects. We did our research by building a prototype demo and examining the complexity and resources required to implement such a feature. Because most of the technology for this feature already exists and is widely available to the public, the costs for development are minimal.
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Problem Statement
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Since Airbnb prevents any external links from being displayed on the listing, the only information available to customers apart from literal descriptions are photographs. We understand that Airbnb is protecting its business by preventing users from exchanging their private contact information by any chance. However, those photographs could be deceptive or uninformative. On the one hand, photographs taken with a wide-angle lens may not depict an accurate representation of the spacial dimensions of the room by distorting the edges of the photographs. On the other hand, photographs taken with a narrow-angle lens only shows a limited portion of the room, which even make the rooms look smaller than they really are. Those photographs make it difficult for viewers to determine the actual room size. Moreover, there would be a potential conflict between the host and its guest if the room size and arrangement is under the guest’s expectation.
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Introduction
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Here is an example of a photograph from a room listing located in Berkeley, CA taken with a narrow-angle lens. Since the angle of view is too narrow, the chair and bed are not fully displayed, not to mention the whole floor. Viewer cannot tell about the size of the room either. Not surprisingly, a guest commented, “The little cottage was quite cute though smaller than I was expecting.”
Here is another example of a photograph taken with a wide-angle lens by a photographer from the profession photograph program. The owner of the room writes in a Quora answer, “the white chair looks like it might be a chair-and-a-half, and the mirror between the bathroom door and the window looks narrower than it is”
We can see from those two examples above that photographs can be deceptive or uninformative. Viewers are likely to be deceived by or confused with those photographs. We found some attempts from the community to address this issue.
On February 16, 2016, an Airbnb host, Clement, started a discussion titled “How can I add a 360 Virtual Tour to my listing?” in the Airbnb Community Center. He suggested that Airbnb should partner up with Do360now.com, a third-party company that makes 360-degree photographs for real estate, to solve the same problem stated above. The discussion has been followed by 53 comments and viewed for 4319 times by now.
Lizzie, an Airbnb Online Community Manager from the United Kingdom, was excited to hear about this idea. (More detail). Lots of people in the following up discussion showed their supports to this proposal. For example, Damir wrote, “I think the 360 degrees photos could add a sense of being there (the listing you wish to book).” Some people made similar suggestions that 360-degree videos or photographs powered by Google Services should be allowed. But it is also pointed out that Do360now.com’s service is of low quality and Google Services is of high expense.
Lizzie further introduced a board in the Community Center called “Host Voice”, a place for hosts to share their ideas and enhancements. She said that ideas posted in the Host Voice with the most thumbs up would be reviewed by Airbnb’s Product Team.
We did a research in the Host Voice board. Daniel proposed in August, 2016 that “videos on listing” should be allowed. Michele posted last week, “You have have fancy video headers on your home page, we are forced to use plain old photos? Please allow at least photo spheres!” Steven suggested that accessing video tours from uploaded or embedded links should be allowed.
Unfortunately, we could not find any official response from the developer team to these requests, which may be due to those requests’ being poorly organized. But we can see that there is still a demand for more information other than normal photographs being presented in the listings. Hosts want to show more details about their homes, and users are willing to gain more confidence by being exposed to more detailed information when they are searching for strangers’ places to live.
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Problems with Possible Solutions
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People like Clement suggest that Airbnb partner up with a third-party virtual-tour service such as Panaroo and Do360now.com so that users can be directed to another website hosting 360-degree photographs. Interesting as the solution might be, we don’t think it would be the best. First, the quality of the third-party service cannot be guaranteed, and Airbnb should not let a third party affect its user experience. Second, it disobeys the principle that embedded links should be prevented in order to protect the business, since users would be directed to the third-party website. Moreover, hosts’ experience would be negatively influenced since they have make extra effort to go to a third-party service.
Some hosts would also like to upload videos to better display their houses. This would be problematic because it is possible for hosts to show their personal contact information in the video to other users, so they can make the deal outside the platform. Also, videos are large in their sizes. There would be a overhead expense for those videos to be stored in the server.
Airbnb had a short partnership with Matterport last year. As far as we know, that was a beta test for hosts in Sonoma, California to display a virtual tour of their houses created by professionals from Matterport. Users could choose the Sonoma Select filter to see about 37 different listings with interactive Matterport 3-D models that let you take a virtual tour of each listing. The 3-D models were professionally made and perfected embedded. It was wonderful because users could appreciate beautiful 360-degree photographs without navigating to the third-party website. However, this project vanished silently. We assume the reason for this project being killed is that Matterport’s service was too expensive.
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Our Proposal
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Compared to the solutions above, we came up with a solution that can eliminate most side effects: Airbnb should allow hosts to upload 360-degree photographs, and develop an interface for users to view 360-degree photographs in Airbnb’s website and mobile application.
360-degree photographs are similar to virtual-reality (VR) experiences. People familiar with VR should know that it is difficult to explain what and how great VR is to other people unless they experience it themselves. Therefore, we built a prototype to simply demonstrate a 360-degree photograph. You can open the link here either with your desktop or smartphone to see a 360-degree photograph of our living room. With a smartphone, you can simply hold and move your phone around, as if you are right inside of our living room. With a desktop, you can drag the photograph around with your mouse.
There are lots of benefits of developing an interface to display 360-degree photographs:
- A 360-degree photograph shows more and better information. Users do not have to click on each photograph of a room taken from different angles and try to imagine how the room looks like as a whole. One 360-degree photograph is sufficient and simple to acknowledge users about the information they need. It saves lots of time, which is very valuable to them.
- A 360-degree photograph is not deceiving. A normal photograph taken with a wide-angle lens can be deceiving since the edges are often distorted. The kitchen in the photograph beneath is larger than it really is. However, when you drag and place the kitchen to the center of the frame, it shows its real size.
- Airbnb would not be worrying about information like external links leaking. A 360-degree photograph is in a format such as JPG, the same as any other photographs. It will not require external links if Airbnb develop the interface and store the photographs by itself.
- There is no need for third-party services. Third-party services can have many potential issues that has to do with user privacy, copyright and budgeting.
- We would not need extra large servers to store the 360-degree photographs compared with storing videos. A 360-degree-equirectangular-panoramic photograph (picture above) with good quality is about the size of 5 MB. It is larger than normal photographs, however, it contains much more information than a single normal photograph does.
- It would be cheap and convenient for hosts to generate 360-degree photographs by themselves. We took the 360-degree photograph of our living room by a Nexus 6P. Actually, anyone with a smartphone can take 360-degree photographs easily.
- Trusts would be built between hosts and guests. Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, delivered an impressive speech titled “How Airbnb designs for trust” in the TED Talks. He bet the whole company on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in one another's homes. The trust can be built upon the rating and commenting system, it can also be enhanced by showing more trustworthy photographs. If 360-degree photographs are introduced, guests would be more confident about the rooms where they would stay, and there would be more trust between hosts and guests.
- 360-degree photographs can be as visually appealing as any other normal photographs while keeping its great features. We notice that the photographers in the professional photography program usually use a camera with wide-angle lens. Those photographs are appealing, but they can be deceiving because of the distortion. 360-degree photographs can also be taken with wide-angle lens, but it can be dragged around to eliminate the distortion. So when displayed on Airbnb’s frontpage as thumbnails, they are equally appealing as any other normal photographs while keeping the reality.
- 360-degree photographs are cool. When we showed our prototype to our friends, they are all excited about the killer feature. We believe that it would improve user experience, and it is also a good way to advertise.
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Technology Details
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We could incorporate Google's application program interface (API), VR View, directly into Airbnb’s website and mobile application. VR View allows you to embed 360-degree media into websites on desktop and mobile, as well as native apps on Android and iOS. It supports images with equirectangular-panoramic format which could be generated by most smartphones. VR View not only supports true stereoscopic VR playback through compatibility with Google Cardboard, it defaults to a simple “magic window” mode that works on everything from desktop browsers to mobile apps without any special hardware.
Google has provided a thought instruction for hosting 360-degree photographs, “As a client side display solution, VR view allows developers to choose the best hosting and distribution strategy for their unique needs. Most developers will likely choose to host their media on a web server via HTTP/HTTPS. This approach works equally well for Web and Native. As long as you can provide a URL for your media, VR view can handle it. For native apps, you can also use media that is packed with your app. This approach is ideal if you want to ensure some media is instantly accessible for users of your apps or available to users without internet connections.” In our prototype, we choose to host the 360-degree photograph in a Github repository following an online guide. Theoretically, Airbnb could host the photographs in its server directly.
By incorporating Google's API, Airbnb would not have to spend too many resources on programming because the technology already exists and is readily available for implementation. Google has handled almost all of the difficult and time-consuming work required to ensure compatibility across all modern browsers and mobile operating systems. Therefore, there is very little need for Airbnb to build a 360-degree-photograph interface from scratch. A little bit of programming and testing would be enough to create a viable prototype. The small amount of overhead means only a relatively small increase in servers necessary to maintain and run the service. Not only would it be relatively cheap to implement the service, it would be relatively quick to put it into action as well. For example, one of us only spent one hour building the prototype mentioned above.
The main drawback of this approach is that Airbnb would be relying on a third-party service, Google Services. Google may change its API at any time, not reliable and it is not professional to do so. Therefore, Airbnb May need to develop its own API. We are not sure about the exact budget needed to build the API. But intuitively speaking, we do not think it would be a too expensive or time-consuming project for Airbnb.
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How to Take 360-degree Photographs
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Not before long, Facebook embedded a interface for 360-degree photographs and videos and provided two major ways to take 360-degree photographs that we would need.
The first way is to take a panorama with an iOS device or Samsung Galaxy phone or capture a 360-degree photograph on a smartphone using an app like Street View or Google Camera. According to a research from the Pew Review Center, 64% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind in 2015. So it would not be a problem for normal hosts to capture 360-degree photographs of their rooms. However, the drawbacks of this approach would be unstable qualities. Because the 360-degree photographs are not taken professionally by professional people with professional devices, the quality of the photographs would vary widely depending on the proficiency of the individuals taking the pictures.
We found the problem above solvable after some investigations. When you are rotating your smartphone in 360 degrees when taking 360-degree photographs, it is essential to fix the camera to a rotation center. Otherwise, the algorithm cannot piece together photographs fragments with different rotation centers. The rotation center is usually about five centimeters in front of the camera, depending of specific models. Therefore, it is requires some experiments and practice. Once the hosts handle the technique, which is not difficult to learn, they will easily take good 360-degree photographs by themselves.
The second approach is more professional: a 360-degree photograph can be taken with a 360 camera, such as the Samsung Gear 360, RICOH THETA S, 360Fly, Giroptic 360 Cam or ALLie Camera. We don't think it is necessary for normal hosts to equip those expensive cameras. However, it is possible for Airbnb for carry out an official professional 360-degree-photography program based on the original professional photography program. Then professional photographers can use those equipments to make perfect 360-degree photographs for hosts. Thanks to the original professional photography program, not only the whole website became much more appealing, but hosts also started to learn from those professionals and are able to make better photographs. We believe that the same phenomenon would happen if Airbnb launches a professional 360-degree-photography program.
It is also fine if Airbnb does not want to incorporate a professional 360-degree-photography program. For those who do not have any capable devices or seek high qualities, they can always look for professional photographers themselves.
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A Pilot Program
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Just like how Airbnb had their pilot program with Matterport to test the waters for virtual reality tours, it would be expected for Airbnb to test the service with a pilot program. Airbnb could do a limited rollout of the program to test for stability and user reception. Because 360-degree photographs are much larger in size than normal photographs, additional server capacity will be required to support the feature. By performing a limited rollout, Airbnb can obtain accurate data as well as experience to determine how much upgrades they would need to perform for their servers. The limited scope testing means Airbnb only has to add capacity to some of their servers. This not only reduces cost, it also means Airbnb does not put their entire marketplace at risk in case something goes wrong with the initial launch.
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Future of VR
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Virtual reality is becoming increasingly prevalent in our everyday lives. With the launching of Google Street View in 2007, exposure to 360-degree panorama exploded into the mainstream populace. As roads with street view became saturated, Google began offering 360-degree views of the internals of buildings such as hotels. Various real estate companies also partnered with various virtual reality companies to build 360-degree virtual models of their houses. As virtual reality becomes increasingly prevalent, 360-degree photographs will become the norm rather than the exception.
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Communications with Your Teams
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On March 7, 2017, we emailed Airbnb's host outreach team about our idea for adding virtual-reality tours to Airbnb marketplace listings. Mandi Davis replied our email and suggested that we contact Airbnb’s customer service by telephone.
On March 29, 2017, we called Airbnb’s customer service and spoke to a representative, Johnson Gray. Johnson showed his excitement and support when hearing about our suggestion. He invited us to submit our proposal on Airbnb’s feedback webpage, even though it announces that “we won’t be able to respond to every piece of feedback individually.” We submitted our proposal there the same day, but still have yet to hear any further response.
On April 28, 2017, we contacted Lizzie under Clement’s post. Lizzie was excited that this topic went alive again and suggested that we start a new post in the Host Voice with a clear overview of what our idea is, why it would be beneficial and how we think it could work. She was also concerned with the quality of the videos or 360-degree photographs and mentioned the Airbnb photographer program.
Since Michele’s proposal in the Host Voice for 360-degree photographs being allowed is not active, we are starting a new well-stated proposal here.
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Conclusion
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Hosts want to show more details about their homes, and users are willing to gain more confidence by being exposed to more detailed information when they are searching for strangers’ places to live. When external links are not allowed to be displayed in the listings, a 360-degree-photograph interface would be the solution. 360-degree photographs are more informative and less deceiving than normal photographs. The interface for displaying 360-degree photographs is not difficult or expensive to implement. Most hosts can take 360-degree photographs with smartphones by themselves, even though it requires some practice and techniques. We suggest Airbnb incorporate a professional 360-degree photography program to help hosts make better 360-degree photographs. It is also an option for Airbnb to launch this feature as a pilot program.
We choose to post our complete idea here in the Host Voice following Lizzie’s suggestion. However, only the most community-supported ideas could be reviewed by the Product Team, we hope you could give this post a thumb up to support this idea. We also hope the Product Team will review our proposal regardless of the number of thumbs up by the other hosts. On the one hand, lots of hosts may never use a 360-degree photograph, but it is something that people have to experience themselves to realize its power. Therefore, it would be reasonable if our proposal is not widely recognized. On the other hand, we believe in the future of 360-degree photographs and the virtual reality, and we have spent so much effort trying to contribute to Airbnb. We’d like to hear at least the reason why this idea might not be feasible instead of being ignored like other similar proposals.
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Reference
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“Airbnb Professional Photography” Airbnb. https://www.airbnb.com/info/photography. Accessed 9 May. 2017.
“Airbnb Sonoma Select & 360° virtual tours” All about Airbnb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhcH7MKhfvl. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.
“Beautiful Garden Cottage” Airbnb. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/13650730?guests=1&adults=1&children=0&infants=0&location=Berkeley%2C%20.... Accessed 9 May. 2017.
Clement. "How Can I Add a 360 Virtual Tour to My Listing?" Airbnb Community. 28 Feb. 2017, community.airbnb.com/t5/Hosts/How-can-I-add-a-360-Virtual-Tour-to-my-listing/td-p/ 30741. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.
Catanzariti, Patrick. “Embedding Virtual Reality Across the Web with VR Views
”. Sitepoint. 2017.
Daniel. “Videos on Listing” Airbnb Community. 10 Aug. 2016, https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/Videos-on-Listing/idi-p/163174 Accessed 24 Apr. 2017.
"Embedding VR View." Google Developers. Google, 4 Feb. 2017, developers.google.com/vr/ concepts/vrview. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.
"Embedding VR View." Google Developers. Google, 4 Feb. 2017, developers.google.com/vr/ concepts/vrview. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.
“Facebook Media”. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/facebookmedia/get-started/. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.
Gebbia, Joe. "How Airbnb Designs for Trust." TED.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2017.
Li, Ruoxi. “n0where, a personal blog”. Github. https://n0whereruoxi.github.io/journal/Airbnb-virtual-tour.html. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.
Michele. “360° photos should be allowed” Airbnb Community. 23 Apr. 2017. https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/360-photos-should-be-allowed/idi-p/378992. Accessed 24 Apr. 2017.
McHugh, Molly. "Airbnb Steps up Its Game with Professional Photos." Digital Trends. N.p., 07 Oct. 2011. Web. 10 May 2017.
Steven. “Allow Video Tours via Upload or Embed” 18 Sep. 2016. https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/Allow-Video-Tours-via-Upload-or-Embed/idi-p/204028 Accessed 24 Apr. 2017.
Scott, Kirsner. "With This Photo-based VR, You Are (almost) There - The Boston Globe." BostonGlobe.com. N.p., 27 Jan. 2017. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.
“About Us.” Airbnb, Inc. airbnb.com/about/about-us. Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.
Smith, Aaron. “U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015”. Pew Research Center.
Ting, Deanna. “Airbnb Tests Hotel-Style Packaging and Amenities in Sonoma, CA.” Hostelworld. 27 Apr. 2017, skift.com/2016/04/27/airbnb-tests-hotel-style-packaging-and- amenities-in-sonoma-ca/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.
Ruoxi Li
Tau Liou
University of Maryland, College Park
rli12314@terpmail.umd.edu
