Now the Feed does the looking for you

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. 🏡