[motivated_gear]

"Theres a lot of people that spend years telling themselves that they're going to work on rockets. These same people build ad tech platforms and never leave. If you want to build rockets, just go build rockets." -- a very paraphrased Peter Thiel.

If these companies are waiting for the next wave of automation they need to build it. Uber and lyft are trying with self driving but they haven't bet the farm on it. If Uber had spent $800 million on autonomous tech and staked the company's entire future on it, maybe they'd be further.

If Tesla gets to level 4 automation, I doubt they'd have trouble whipping up a ride share platform that connects directly with their vehicles.

[digitaltrees]

Google+ begs to differ. Network effects are real. A product needs to be 10x better than a network effect alternative to have a shot at replacing it. If Tesla is first to market by a year or two, maybe. But if Lyft hits the market within a few months; as a lift user, you’ll just stick to that app, why switch.

[AlexandrB]

> A product needs to be 10x better than a network effect alternative to have a shot at replacing it.

This isn't true, sometimes it's just fashion. At its inception Facebook wasn't 10x better than MySpace. Moreover, ride sharing doesn't benefit from the kind of network effects that social network do. I'm stuck on Facebook because that's where many of my friends are. I have no reason at all to care at all which ride-sharing app my friends use. Even old-school email is more sticky in this regard, my Gmail account has a bunch of historical email I want to keep - so it's unlikely I'll ever delete it entirely. What's in my Uber account? Ride history? Why do I care about keeping that?

A think a better parallel is airlines. I have almost no loyalty to any airline, I just choose the flights that go where I want with the least cost/pain. Why would ride-sharing be that different?

[JMTQp8lwXL]

An emphemeral ride you recieve via a ridesharing app is a commodity. Your social connections are not a commodity. The distinction in where (and where not) network effects applies matters.

Small critique, though: if there are no drivers, you won't ditch Uber of Lyft for the no-name platform that mandates a 60 minute wait before you can get picked up since they have so few drivers.

Perhaps, network effects should be a continuum, with ridesharing at the weaker end, and social networks at the stronger end, when it comes to business relevance.

[Jommi]

Thank you. I'm not sure how people don't grasp this.

[digitaltrees]

Platform liquidity is more powerful than you are giving it credit for. Any two sided marketplace has network effects by definition because the value to buyers increases with the number of sellers as does the opposite.

Airlines are not a two sided marketplace; they own the fleet. I agree Uber is more a commodity than facebook, but almost no product ever has been as sticky as facebook.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Facebook might be sticky, and people have it for the sake of "having" it, but before we all became some Product Manager's KPI to raise "number of likes" and "number of shared posts" -- it was far more useful. Interaction with the platform is, subsequently, way down since I only care to read so many political rants from family I'm not politically in agreement with and "actual photo/footage of me doing <x>" memes. It's so overdone. I never thought I'd hit a point where I'd think, "you know what, I'm not going to touch that political facebook post" because I love to discuss politics-- and here we are.

[b_tterc_p]

Uber’s answer to that is pretty clear and close to what you’re saying: airline style rewards program.

But I think you’re right. The breadth of offerings is too small and the margins are too tight to gain any real loyalty

[digitaltrees]

Loyalty comes from a large pool of drivers. How many times would you jump between random apps, and wait 20 min for an available driver before you just decide to stick with one? I have a lot of friends that travel internationally; they strongly prefer Lyft but have to use Uber because it is available more widely. They all talk about how they could look for a local app...but say 'who cares, Uber is evil, but whatever'.

[jpetso]

If we only had a meta search engine for taxi rides that enabled you to get the quickest ride from any service! Somehow that's a thing in the airline sector but (for now) not in the on-demand ride business.

Or at least not on the client side. Cab drivers appear to have no problem using several apps at the same time and picking the best option.

[Jommi]

That's why the play is with somewhere inbetween, with continental apps like Taxify(bolt), Ola, Grab and Didi. Or then web-based ride hailing.