Now the Feed does the looking for you
Write where you'd love to go, in plain language, and the Community Feed now tells the members who could host you
Drew
Aug 13, 2026 · 4 min read
A member types an ordinary sentence into the Community Feed: "Looking for three weeks in Barcelona in September, and we can offer our home in Sydney's inner west"
Until today, a post like that sat there hoping the right person would happen to scroll past. Now, the members in Barcelona who could actually host them are told about it. And it runs both ways: when someone posts that they are looking for a home in your area, you will hear about it, whether you have posted anything yourself or not.
Because an exchange with People Like Us does not have to be a straight swap, thanks to Globes and Plutos, a match is not about you both wanting each other's homes. It is simply about connecting the members who genuinely fit.
Why we built it
The hard part of home exchange has always been being found by the right member at the right moment. Search does part of the job. You have long been able to find who wants to visit your area on your dates, and that is genuinely useful. But search waits for you to go looking, and anyone who did not go looking missed whoever posted in the meantime.
We have all done that searching by hand for years, me included. The right exchange for you might exist right now, held by a member you have simply never come across. This closes that gap.
Why we could only do this now
This is something we could never do on an outside platform. On a big public feed like Facebook, posts rush past in a passive stream and nobody is really connected to anyone. Because the Community Feed lives inside People Like Us, among members who are all here for the same reason, we can turn that stream into something that genuinely introduces people. The right exchange no longer has to be stumbled upon. The Feed can surface it to the right members, gently, at the right time.
How it works
When you write a Feed post, a language model reads it and works out the place, the dates and the kind of swap you are after. That gets scored against every member's calendar, existing bookings and desired destinations, and the members who fit are notified.
That is the whole of it from your side. Write an ordinary sentence, the way members already do every day, and the matching happens quietly behind the scenes.
Thoughtful, not noisy
We were determined that this help you rather than flood you, so we built it to be careful. It only tells you about what you actually asked for. If you are seeking a campervan, a boat, a cabin or a private room, you will only hear about listings of that kind, not every home in the region. One real post looking for a campervan in Queensland would once have emailed 163 homeowners who had no campervan at all. Now it correctly reaches no one, and waits for the right match to come along.
It also paces itself. You will never get more than one email a fortnight about any given home or area, and anything further simply waits quietly for you in the app.
Your two new notifications, and how to manage them
In your notification settings, under your profile menu, you will find two new options under Homes & exchanges:
- Exchange Opportunities: when a Feed post could become a real exchange, a home in a place you want to visit, or a member looking for a home where yours is.
- Posts in Your Areas: other Feed posts about places on your destination list, or about your own area, even when they do not match your plans exactly.
Each is controlled separately, and each can arrive by email, in-app, or both. You might keep Exchange Opportunities in your inbox and leave the rest in-app, or any other mix that suits you. Turn them all off, and the Feed behaves exactly as it always has.
Your privacy
The matching only ever reads what you choose to post publicly in the Feed, and it works at the level of a town or a region, never a street. No address is used, and none leaves the platform.
It's live now
The feature is on for all members, and there is nothing to set up beyond checking your notification settings are arranged the way you like them.
So write a post about where you would love to go, even if it is months away and even if you have never posted before. Be specific about your dates and what you can offer, because the more your post says, the better we can match it. Your next exchange might already be looking for you. 🏡
Comments (33)
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I am confused about the “feed”. Where do I find it so that I can post. Is this in the app, on FB or??????
Hi Belin, the Feed is here in the PLU platform: https://peoplelikeus.world/feed. It's like Facebook, but it's entirely here in the platform, and it can do so much more than Facebook ever could for PLU and our members.
Can I clarify the comment about an email every fortnight? So if a member asks for a USA exchange and all USA members get notified. Does that mean that if I ask for a USA exchange a week later that USA members will not be notified as they already got an email about a different member making the same request?
I have been offline for a while and wow all the improvements are great but this one takes the trophy for me! thank you for prioritizing great improvements like this! <3
Thanks Lisa, it's getting better and better every week. It's really working to find new exchanges for our members!
Hi Drew - great addition, well done!. You might consider adding another "category" (if possible), in addition to "exchange opportunities" and "posts in your areas" - namely, something along the lines of "posts that align". My wife pointed this out - there often seems to be a mis-alignment between the type of exchange we want (a retired couple, travelling for a month or two), and the responses we get (say, a young family with kids wanting to exchange for a week or two). We really don't need a playroom, crib, etc! I imagine that the algorithm could be tweaked to somehow more closely align similar exchange "types" (retired couple, vs family w small kids, etc, etc) - all in all, as you say, aiming for "the more perfect match"... Thanks, Alister
Hi Alister, it isn't so much that we need another category - it just needs to get better at picking exchange opportunities for you. At the moment, it takes some of your attributes into account and not others. Of course, the more detailed we get, the more complex it becomes, but we'll continue to work on it. The only thing, though, is that we do need to be careful about excluding possibilities that may work for you. For example, you may not need a playroom, but a house that has one may be otherwise ideal so we may not want to make too many assumptions like that. Nevertheless, your point is taken, thank you.
c'est génial !! Merci beaucoup :)
Hi Drew, Could you please give some guidance as to how to maximise this relative to the algorithm used. So obviously make sure the calendar is up to date. But what about locations? So do i just list every single location that could be a match? Should I be specific, or regionly general to get the most matches. ( Eg... I really like Porto, but am open to most places in Europe. Should I put "Porto", "Portugal", or "Europe" as a destination? Would they result in the same matches?) How important is the specific dates? If I use "Flexible", does that over ride my calendar? I would just like to get my profile set up to maximise opportunities. Cheers
..and my question about locations relates to my profile desired locations, as opposed to what i might post in the feed. I am wanting to get my profile optimised to the feed algorithm.
Hi Colin & Leonie, Do both (wide and narrow). The reason is that we do set an upper limit on notifications and "Europe" is so general that you won't always show up. Flexible is fine if you truly are, but the difference is that desired destinations show when you want to travel, and your calendar shows when your home is available. That will often coincide, but not always, for everyone. Overall, the more, the better but add places that you truly want to go and be notified about. Cheers, Drew
Ok thanks. I was wondering if it was silly to have a huge list of places in my desired locations. But it sounds like the more the merrier might be the go.
Wow this will make it so easy to find the perfect match instead of spending hours of wasted scrolling. LOVE IT!
Exactly what we're hoping for .. to bring you your perfect match! 😃
I just got an alert from the feed about Kate looking for a home in New Mexico, Arizona or Southern California. “And yours is right there” Mine is in Minnesota nowhere near those other states. So something isn’t working quite right.
Same here
It's something we're aware of, particularly for big countries like yours and ours, but also just getting the accuracy closer. Working on it. 🙂
GM this is such great news. I only go to the feed when I’m really searching for something so it’s maybe twice a year as it’s impossible to always look through it. This saves time and is so much more efficient. Wish it was the same with FB groups but I know that’s not possible. Looking forward to getting notified if someone is looking for our area. Thanks @drew.
Yes, we definitely can't do this in Facebook, but we can do anything we can imagine inside our own platform. My aim is to make it indispensable to you! 😃
Hi Drew - if we list multiple destination in one post, will it recognise both? Great feature! Thanks
Hey Joel, it will, yes. It may be that very complex combinations wouldn’t be understood perfectly but if you have two locations it should work it out.
Great addition and great work, Drew. Happy to avoid Facebook!!
Haha, me too, a nice side-effect!
Two women in our 60s have a light, airy, comfortable and spacious townhouse in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia Canada and would need someone to live in our home for at least 3 months or up to 7 months between December 15th 2026 and June 30th 2027. Nothing shorter than 3 months is allowed in our complex, so that would be the minimum, although we'd be even happier you have someone here the whole time, almost all the seasons in BC without the smoke season🥴 At the same time we're looking to be in Cape Town (and although we have elsewhere you stay in December, and April 6 through June), we are looking for somewhere to be hopefully in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town (though also open to Hermanus) between January and April 6th :-) during this time. If anything sounds workable to you please get in touch...
Hi Bethan, add that in the Feed - you'll find it on the menu. We won't pick it up from here in the blog comments. 🙂
This sounds like one of the best additions ever. Make the feed more valuable than FB group! I love it! So many useful upgrades done since we joined. Great work💪!
I really think it's one of the best things we've done, and there's a lot more to come in the same area too. Thank you for the vote of confidence! ❤️
Drew, First of all : thank you! What an awesome addition. I never put available dates in my calendar but stated in my home description, flexible and available anytime (or something like that). To make this feature work, does this mean I should add let’s say : available Sept-Nov and January - May. I’m not sure what to enter in here. Thoughts?
Hi Barbara, it's always best to keep your calendar updated. I know it's not always easy, but it's one of the best signals we have to tell us what you want (or, just as importantly, WHEN you want it). When you add a post, just add dates in whatever format you want - you can say Sept-Nov, or give exact dates, or whatever, but the more specific you are, the better.