Sleeping with strangers for a hotel discount?

Sleeping with strangers could easily be a title for a thriller. But in that case, instead of fear, this might bring a little happiness, especially for those who love a good bargain. 

In the latest sharing economy trend, this website has been created for travelers who don’t mind sleeping with strangers to save a few dollars. 

One room, two beds

The premise: given that hotels and resorts charge guests per room and night, Easynest allows solo travelers to shack up with fellow lodgers so that everyone can slash their hotel bill in half “…and make new friends.”

After signing up with Easynest, users link their profile with social networking accounts such as Facebook and Twitter for virtual introductions. The more complete and fleshed-out the profile, the more likely guests will send requests.

After listing the hotel with dates and location, fellow users with similar travel itineraries can peruse the site and contact hosts.

The concept behind Easynest isn’t far behind that of Couchsurfing, where homeowners open up their living rooms, guest rooms and couches to strangers. But for some (or many) going to a strangers house might be too much. For those, Easynest is a good compromise. 

Looking for a companion to keep you company for part or all of your trip? TravBuddy is another site that pairs up open-minded, adventurous solo travelers with likeminded holidaymakers.

So, do you think hotels will like that? On one hand, they could be selling "half" the rooms, but on the other hand, they might have guests that weren't going to the hotel in the first place... 

Too old for a hostel, too cheap for a hotel? This could be the solution...

Let us know what you think!

@TaciOneGlobe

LinkedIn University Pages helps you choose a school

Going through thousands of brochures to choose a school is not easy. They all show the same thing: everybody happy, with their books under a beautiful tree... C'mon, we all know what really matter when choosing a college: PARTIES! Ok, just kidding. Although parties are important, what really matters in a school is what you are going to do after it. Where are you going to work, what are your chances to succeed and which fields of study each school has as a strong point.

Thinking about that, LinkedIn announced last Monday, August 19,  the global launch of the University Pages, a service with pages of universities around the world that aims to help users decide which college to attend. The profile of universities will be more than just a page with institutional information and news. Universities will be able to ask questions and get to know the future students (and vice versa).

The tool also will provide easy info through various filters and statistics collected from the data of former students of these institutions that have a LinkedIn profile.

The blue bars indicate in which field or in which company the
former students are working in.

Within the pages of each university it will be possible to see what kind of leaders the school "creates", see which institutions are more focused on which goal (for example: universities with economics courses more focused on the financial market), contact with students and alumni for more information and filter results by location, company, industry and lknow which skills the former students have acquired throughout their professional careers.

The page also displays the profile of successful alumni in the institution (did you know that Eric Shuster, founder of Intel went to the University of Phoenix?), the user's friends who graduated at the site and a list of schools with similar profiles worldwide. The search also helps find people who studied in the same university in the same period from the user and shows indicators on where the majority lives and works today. Almost creepy right?

Because of this, LinkedIn is preparing a change in its terms of use. From September 12, the social network will allow people from 13 years to build their profile on the site - until then the use was restricted to people over 18 years - so they can use the service on the years before actually going to the University.

See the video published by LinkedIn with some tips.

By @TaciOneGlobe - follow me!

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