How Airbnb Measures Future Value to Standardize Tradeoffs

The propensity score matching model powering how we optimize for long-term decision-makingBy Mitra Akhtari, Jenny Chen, Amelia Lemionet, Dan Nguyen, Hassan Obeid, Yunshan ZhuAt Airbnb, we have a vision to build a 21st century company by operating over an infinite time horizon and balancing the interests of all stakeholders. To do so effectively, we...

2w

A Deep Dive into Airbnb’s Server-Driven UI System

How Airbnb ships features faster across web, iOS, and Android using a server-driven UI system named Ghost Platform 👻.By Ryan BrooksBackground: Server-Driven UIBefore we dive into Airbnb’s implementation of server-driven UI (SDUI), it’s important to understand the general idea of SDUI and how it provides an advantage over traditional client-driven UI.In...

4w

Building an Inclusive Codebase

Our playbook for driving down non-inclusive terminologyBy: Michael Bachand, Amanda Vawter, Dan Federman, Jake Silver, Julia Wang, Mark TaiCode is our craft. At Airbnb, we view our code and product as a reflection of our values. Each developer imbues their work with a piece of themselves. We want all engineers to be proud of the codebase in which they...

Jun 2021

How Airbnb Standardized Metric Computation at Scale

Metric Infrastructure with Minerva @ AirbnbPart II: The six design principles of Minerva compute infrastructureBy: Amit Pahwa, Cristian Figueroa, Donghan Zhang, Haim Grosman, John Bodley, Jonathan Parks, Maggie Zhu, Philip Weiss, Robert Chang, Shao Xie, Sylvia Tomiyama, Xiaohui SunIntroductionAs described in the first post of this series, Airbnb invested...

Jun 2021

Building a faster web experience with the postTask scheduler

Building a Faster Web Experience with the postTask SchedulerWhen was the last time you opened a page on a website and tried to click on something multiple times for it to work? Or the last time you swiped on an image in a carousel and it stuttered and shifted around unnaturally?While this type of experience happens far too often, we can use tools that...

May 2021

Airbnb’s Promotions and Communications Platform

OMNI is an intuitive, homegrown platform that supports message creation, processing, and distribution to engage our guests and hosts at the right time and on the right channels.By Paritosh Aggarwal and Henry WuIntroductionAirbnb is a busy marketplace with millions of active users across the globe. Billions of messages are exchanged each year — both...

May 2021

How does Airbnb track and measure growth marketing?

By: Jing Guo, Henry Wu, Abhrajit Mukherjee, Shike MeiIntroductionAirbnb’s mission is to “Create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.” This message is delivered to people all around the world through marketing, e.g., See What’s Possible When It’s Made Possible by Hosts. It helps Airbnb connect guests and hosts to build a strong community, and undoubtedly...

May 2021

How Airbnb Achieved Metric Consistency at Scale

Data is the voice of our users at scale. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw that travel with Airbnb has become hyper-local.Part-I: Introducing Minerva — Airbnb’s Metric PlatformAuthors: Robert Chang, Amit Pahwa, Shao XieIntroductionAt Airbnb, we lean on data to inform our critical decisions. We validate product ideas through randomized controlled...

Apr 2021

Himeji: a scalable centralized system for authorization at Airbnb

Himeji: A Scalable Centralized System for Authorization at Airbnbby Alan Yao, Dipak Pawar, Blair Wu, and Abhishek ParmarThe ProblemOver the last couple of years, Airbnb engineering moved from a monolithic Ruby on Rails architecture to a service oriented architecture. In our Rails architecture, we had an API per resource to access the underlying data....

Apr 2021

Achieving Insights and Savings with Cost Data

The path to cloud efficiency begins with a cost data foundationby Anna Matlin and Tamar EtermanIntroductionBusiness profitability and sustainability are powerful reasons to invest in infrastructure efficiency, but it is easy to feel lost about how to actually reduce costs. A foundation of robust and actionable data is essential for a successful efficiency...

Apr 2021