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Comment by samd | Hacker News Reader

One of the most compelling things about AirBnB is the gorgeous photos of all those unique places. I don't know how they get them. Do they just have lots of hosts with amazing photography skills or do they send people out to take pictures?

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Paying a pro photographer to come take a few shots of the place pays off immensely in the number of bookings. It's just good marketing.

I'm just surprised hosts have enough marketing wherewithal to do that on their own. Though maybe AirBnB makes a point of telling people to get professional photos done.

Why don't any of the major dating sites have contracts with a pro photographer in each city to do head shots for cheap or free? It seems like such a slam dunk idea given the economics, and yet none of the major dating sites want to do it. (Having emailed the staff of some of these sites with this idea a couple years ago on behalf of a photographer friend and receiving no response.)

Major dating sites likely still largely pull revenue from advertisement and pay-to-message hurdles.

As a photographer, however, I can attest that there is a market for people looking to pay to have a better Facebook/LinkedIn/Dating-Site profile photo.

If a good photo dramatically increases the amount of people who want to send you messages, then wouldn't subsidizing your userbase to have good photos be enormously profitable? Especially since getting just 2% of your users to take advantage of the service could make the other 98% much more likely to become paying users.

actually in Istanbul there was a studio that offered a service of making photos that look like shot in different parts of the world, partying with friends, on a sandy beach with cocktails in hand, etc. for people who otherwise never gets to be in those places and envy others on social networks that do :)

A user who does this and is successful will no longer have a need for the dating site profile, or to pay the monthly fee for the site.

Depends on what they're using the site for (e.g. random hook ups means repeat customer).

because the prevailing style of personal photo is "Internet Disease" :P

"Internet Disease means displaying old, faded, blurred or otherwise non-descript photographs of oneself, taken with bad lighting and at awkward angles" - in order to hide obesity and acne. I'd give a link to the encyclopedia dramatica definition of it if it were not for the popups on that page.

You can request to have a professional photographer come out to your listing.

http://www.airbnb.com/info/photography

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