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Uber CEO: We'll Run Your Errands
mpicpp writes with Uber's latest plans for expansion. The future of Uber is about pharmacies and rickshaws. So says CEO Travis Kalanick. One of several avenues for expansion is in a category of delivery that's about running errands. "In Los Angeles, we're doing something called Uber Fresh, which is you push a button and you get a lunch in five minutes," Kalanick told CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "In DC, we're doing Uber Corner Store. So imagine all the things you get at a corner store...FedEx isn't going to your nearest pharmacy and delivering something to you in five minutes," he continued. Another is in emerging markets, where the company may focus on rickshaws, rather than high-end black cars, Kalanick said.
So, they'll go to Subway, wait in line to be served, tell them what I want in my sub, pick up a bag of chips, fill the oversized cup with my choice of drink and then deliver it to me, all of that inside five minutes?
I'd rather wait for the McCopter to deliver my Big Mac and fries.
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What's wrong with bringing a lunch to work or walking there, rather than "push button lunch/car emissions come out"
I immediately though of Kozmo.com.
but WHY did it collapse? was it distribution? poor messaging? slow communication?
A lot of those reason have been solved.
Sometimes people see where a technology is going, and jump to the point, forgetting the need for infrastructure to support it. Once the technology infrastructure is in place, those things become marketable.
In short, you need to eat your meat before you can have you pudding.
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The documentary about Kosmo.com, e-Dreams, is both fascinating and painful to watch. These guys went through a breathtakingly huge pile of money in a very short time, trying to do exactly this sort of personalized delivery. It gives you a real feel for how truly insane VC funding was in the late '90s. Maybe Kalanick should check this film out before putting too much effort into this idea.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
Isn't this ultimately what this kind of service (d)evolves into?
but WHY did it collapse?
Because home delivery is expensive.
Hiro Protagonist will be an Uber driver.
Historically, governments justified the "certification" requirements imposed on people wishing to pursue various professions by the consumers' inability to share the information required to make an informed choice of a service provider.
For example, arriving to a new city, you don't know, what taxi company is decent and which hires serial rapists — the city hall should issue "medallions" to the good drivers and fight attempts by the non-vetted to provide the same services without paying the authorities their due.
Uber is showing, how the consumer feedback, that's easy to provide and is immediately available to anyone with a smart phone, obviates the need for such certifications — along with the associated costs and the abuse-potential. Taxi-services is not the only market, where things can (and should!) be changed by the pervasive smart-phones. Plumbers and electricians would be next on my list of professions, which should not require certifications (though some may seek approvals from non-governmental authorities like "Angie's List", if they choose to). Then restaurateurs — patrons could report roach-sightings just as well (or better) than a city's health-inspector. Then lawyers and eventually, even veterinarians and human doctors...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You joke, but one of the effects of increasing income inequality can be that the high income group starts to rely on the low income group more and more for these kinds of services.
Uber is showing, how the consumer feedback, that's easy to provide and is immediately available to anyone with a smart phone,
Right- anyone. That's exactly the problem. All you need to do to game the system as an Uber driver is put together a network of colluders to give you good reviews after you give them "rides". In the past, you only needed to find a few bad actors within the government- now literally anyone can help you with your racket.
This is quite a piece of idolotry. Let us start at the end first. For many jobs no one requires a certified plumber or electrician or anything. There is no requirement to get such a certification. For certain jobs it is a requirement to get a permit, but that is to protect lives. OTOH I am sure you would no problem if your family died because the water heater exploded or the house caught on fire because of the work of a plumber or electrician was faulty, because, after all, she had good recommendations from people who had no expertise in critiquing the actual work. In any case, such requirements as the exists, are demanded not by government but by bankers, insurance companies, and general sane people who do not want to die because the invisible hand, or magic ratings, or whatever, was a substitute for competence. It is intersting that th.s hair brained scheme was introduced after the previous hair brained scheme, to force some Uber drivers to work at or below cost, failed. You see some of the driver took the capitalistic idea of better service leading to more profits seriously,So they only wanted to serve the high end clientele, and invested resources to do so. But Uber told them they could not limit themselves to high end customers, and said if the drivers did not pick up any customer that Uber sent, they would be out of the network. This was absolutely Uber's right to do, after all the contractors could just leave, but I think it speaks to an issue with capitalistic fantasy. At some point the people who are taking a cut of everything the workers do, will want an increasingly large cut to support their increasingly inefficient operations, and to do that they will begin to compete on price instead of service. The contractors, as individuals, can make that choice on a case by case basis. Corporate, however, seeing only a lack of funding for their cocaine habit, are only able to make drastic decisions to increase funding for said habit. In any case, the Uber drivers still had the ability to strike, so they did, and Uber relented.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black