[mft_]

(As someone whose family has often hired gites for holidays) Airbnb just offers simplicity and centralisation over the previous offerings. Less regular gite-hirers might not know of the precise businesses to go to, to hire a gite.

Taxis existed before Uber; but it was the app (handling location, real-time updates, and seamless payment) that changed things.

[Ntrails]

> Taxis existed before Uber; but it was the app (handling location, real-time updates, and seamless payment) that changed things.

I disagree - the game changer vs previous minicab offerings is the centralisation. Instead of ringing 4 companies and being given different waiting times by each etc, a single source tells me (initially, before the inevitable split into lyft et al) what the next available cab time is.

In the same way that early netflix felt like a game changer because I had loads of stuff in one place. A lot of the utility drains away as soon as competition appears again and you're back where you started.

[gverrilla]

In Brazil's delivery market what happened was first there was a company centralizing all delivery phones in a single phone number, but their web interface was very bad and there was no app. The company that went on to first centralize the whole thing using advanced user interfaces won, and eventually bought the first company.

[rmellow]

Let's not forget the value of a reputation system. Both parties have an incentive to be reasonable & avoid getting kicked out of the platform.

Yeah, it's not perfect, and some bad actors abuse the rating system: "the driver wants me to wear a mask? I'll report him for unsafe driving" was one that I heard before.

But ultimately, knowing there's a record of whose car I went into makes me feel safer than riding with an unvetted driver that no one else knows I'm with.