Now you can Airbnb more than an Airbnb
Time to stir the pot a little bit (and I love Airbnb).
Airbnb didn’t start as a platform. It started as a marketplace. It became an aggregator. And that distinction matters, especially on the heels of their latest release.
Let’s rewind to Ben Thompson's iconic work on platform and aggregator theory:
A platform enables others to build on top of it (think iOS, Shopify, AWS).
An aggregator centralizes demand, owns the user relationship, and commoditizes supply (think Google, Facebook, Amazon).
Airbnb was once a marketplace. It helped people rent out spare rooms and unique homes. Over time, it became an aggregator:
It owned the booking funnel
It dictated discoverability
It disintermediated hosts
It standardized trust through UX and reviews
It earned that position. And it worked really well.
Until now.
Airbnb wants to become an "everything app" for travel:
Book a room
Book a chef
Book a massage
Book… anything
It's a bold move.
It's also classic Aggregator Drift.
What’s Aggregator Drift? It's what happens when an aggregator starts expanding into tangential or unrelated verticals, not because there's a clear network effect, but because it controls attention. Control of demand is not the same as coherence of product.
Here are some examples of Aggregator Drift.
👉 Core: Social network that aggregated user attention.
👉 Drift: Facebook Dating, Crypto wallet, VR empire.
💥 Result: Confused product vision. Copycat features. Eroded user trust.
Uber
👉 Core: Aggregator of ride demand + standardized supply.
👉 Drift: Uber Freight, Uber Health, Uber Copter.
💥 Result: Disconnected ops, margin erosion, product bloat.
Yahoo!
👉 Core: The internet's original news and search aggregator.
👉 Drift: Acquired everything from Tumblr to Flickr to GeoCities.
💥 Result: Fragmented identity, failed integrations, stagnant core products.
Here’s the crux:
Airbnb's magic wasn't that it had inventory. It was that it had identity. Staying in a stranger's home used to feel like an adventure. Now it feels like shopping.
The 2025 release is a strategic bet on breadth. But Airbnb succeeded because of its depth.
Depth of story.
Depth of trust.
Depth of community.
And here’s the danger:
When you stop deepening the core and start layering on features for breadth, you start to erode instead of evolve.
The new "Services" feature may look like a new revenue stream. But it smells like a hedge. A dilution of what made the product coherent. Worse, it assumes users want more from Airbnb, when in fact, they may just want better.
So, what should Airbnb do?
If they want to expand:
Build second-order network effects on top of the home.
Go deeper into hosted experiences tied to a stay.
Integrate concierge layers that enhance, not replace, the booking journey.
What do you think? Smart evolution or slow erosion?