THIS week we look at one of the names on the lips of those in the know.

Airbnb (www.airbnb.com) is one of the most talked-about new upstarts in Silicon Valley.

The company has reinvented the quaint idea of renting holiday accommodation by letting anyone do it.

It doesn’t matter if you have a luxury six-bedroom mansion or a tiny city studio flat. You can put it on Airbnb and rent it out to complete strangers.

The trouble is: can you trust them? Until now, Airbnb hasn’t had any problems. But last week a blogger known only as “EJ” wrote an article (ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com) that upset the Airbnb apple cart.

She rented out her San Francisco apartment to strangers via Airbnb – and when she returned home, found they had trashed it. Personal possessions including a laptop, credit cards and jewellery were stolen. A passport and other personal documents were missing. Furniture had been damaged and moved around. There was mess and filth everywhere, she said.

The idea of Airbnb is that it’s as much a community as it is a travel service.

The idea was that no one would do this sort of thing, because of the potential backlash from the community. Both travellers and hosts would be able to leave feedback about one another rather like selling on eBay.

Airbnb has bent over backwards to help EJ, but her experience, and the way she shared it publicly on a blog, has done damage to the brand.

Airbnb is now operating internationally. You can tell it’s a good idea because a bunch of similar sites have sprung up, including 9flats.com and myfriendshotel.com.

Let’s hope between them, they can come up with ways of preventing EJ’s nightmare happening again.

THE GIFT OF A BLOG

Designer Tina Roth Eisenberg couldn’t think of what to give her friend Maria for a birthday present. So instead she gave her a blog (yellowthingsformaria.tumblr.com), prefilled with photos of anything and everything yellow, because that’s Maria’s favourite colour. If you’ve ever been stuck for a gift idea, you could steal this one – and all it will cost you is a little time. Grab a free, easy-to-use blog in seconds from tumblr.com, or posterous.com, or blogger.com.